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?
>>2583956Care to give a TL;DR summary?
>>2583942>Maupin asserts that intellectual elites (PMC) are heavily into salon culture and edgy things that have aristocratic connotations.I don't think so. It really depends on which sections of the PMC you're talking about, but generally speaking, whether they're "liberal" or "conservative" neither one has much more than a pretense towards intellectual pursuits like "salon culture." The pretense gives the credentials they base their careers on the veneer of intellectualism, as something more than just a piece of paper their mommy and daddy bought them, but intellectuslism among the upper classes is all but dead. Developing the intellect means developing conviction, and convictions are career poison.
>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. Yeah, true. They're the plantation overseers of society, and sympathizing with the field slaves is anathema to The Career, which is what the pmc worships.
>the PMC are “gangsters.”I think they romanticize things because their class position and world view requires insulation from material reality. The only aristocratic pretenses that they actually believe in is that they're materially rewarded for being "right." For Republican PMCs it's "God's blessing" and for the Democrats it's "being a good fucking person," but the result of both is that they get wealthier and are granted more of the fruits of their even wealthier patrons. That ultimately means they're ever increasingly insulated from the reality of their actions and decisions and the results of all the people they crush to get where they are. For normal, well developed people, coming into contact with the human cost of cutting healthcare or bombing another country is cause for soul searching at the very least. But that's the thing people with convictions do, and the pmc carefully select that kind of thing out.
>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. Rationality is a matter of whatever you're measuring it against. The PMC's irrationality is a measure of what they have to and are willing to do in order to secure their class position. Since it's unlimited, they can be no proportionality, because acting "rationally" would mean the elimination of their class and probably themselves.
>After all, the marginalized find allies in college professors promoting queer studies and doctors handing out narcan, do they not?The marginalized have to take what they can get but that's because their class position makes them deeply vulnerable and thus exploitable, not because they are natural allies of the pmc.
>>2583942Ehhh I think it’s silly to refer to jazz and rap music in quotation marks—they’re music too, not any lesser cause it ain’t Bach or whatever.
That said if I could put some of my own hypotheses forward, I think part of it is a recognition of their own impotence within the Capitalist system. They’re “ideas guys”, shorn of an actual relationship to violence, they rely on what amounts to patronage from others pretty often or appealing to a narrow scope of acolytes and sycophants. Like think about the relations of someone like Stephen Pinker with power; he has to be a kiss ass to richer men than him who like his ideas that reinforce their class position. Being in the “PMC” means you’ve got status above the masses but you still are a dependent, you still have someone above you.
And here’s the thing: a lot of people above you are fucking stupid. Apparently some of Elon Musk’s programmers had to build a program to mimic complicated code because Elon would sweep into the office and start barking at them to make specific coding changes and most of his demands just caused stuff to break. So you’re paid well, you’re given a status above the common worker, but you still feel like for all your brains you’re powerless and ruled by idiots.
Romanticized violence becomes a frequent fantasy for these types because they feel constrained by the rules of small minds, and because they feel their powerlessness more acutely than someone—say—working in a WalMart and getting idiotic demands from corporate. Service workers have no status, they aren’t told they’re special or heroes or whatever, their jobs aren’t ever considered something they “earned” through merit, they don’t have a degree functioning as some “I’m better than you” slip.
So PMC are told they’re part of the select, but they feel constrained, they can see their merits as clearly superior to those of their bosses, but they recognize their ideas on their own are limp. It’s not a matter of proving them right, or being persuasive, but of being given patronage by someone above you.
So that builds contempt, I think. Envy. They see themselves as above the workers and the bosses but still subject to bosses.
>>2583942>a proletarian revolution would mean they lose their privileges and end up working in the fields.
>the PMC (university professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, artists, those types of people)Why would socialists make doctors and engineers work as farmhands? This sounds like your own description of the PMC:
> 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. Also many revolutions did try to destroy all vestiges of the previous regime so I dunno seems kinda accurate although you could say it's something to avoid if you can but good luck telling that to the excited crowds. Even in ancient societies the victors would smash the idols of their enemies.
>>2583942It's not that they hate rationality, it's that they have high openness to experience. They are in many ways basically just the dispositional opposite of rightoids ( see
>>2546215 ) They are tolerant and they enjoy novelty. Where rationality delivers novelty it's fine, but where it delivers mundanity it's condemned in a romantic sort of way.
This is, incidentally, the correct worldview. The PMC are basically good people. The more proletarianized they become, the better they will become. A proletarian revolution would send them to the fields only in the dreams of LARPers who are themselves usually novelty-seeking PMC-adjacent little freaks who've got ideas above (below?) their station. The revolution will, in fact, need doctors and nurses and teachers and central planners and railway timetable designers and theatre reviewers and all sorts of other people who don't fit with your discount khmer rouge fantasies. And a good thing, too!
Even their anti-rationalism has its merits as a sort of error checking. Inject too high a dose of a rightoid striver's mindset into a could-be PMC-type and you wind up with the rationalist community telling you why we've got to sacrifice all the starving children of the third world to Elon Musk today so that we increase our odds of building gigantic fleets of spaceships where our great great great great… great grandchildren and their pet shrimp can all be kept permanently hooked to an opium drip, because after all the math says that's the utility maximizing option… >>2583967You should just read it but
>So what have I learned from writing this down?
>First, calling the PMC a class is analytically useful. Per the Ehrenreichs’ 1977 definition, the PMC consists 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.” The PMC has identifiable class interests and is at least somewhat conscious of itself as a class. The position of the PMC has some inherent challenges and contradictions based on class interests that are inherently adverse to both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
>Second, the ideology and reproductive strategy of the PMC for the last 30 years has created additional challenges for individual members of the PMC. The PMC ideology is enervating for many people, and aspiring PMC youth cannot count on achieving satisfactory roles even if they comply with all the practical and ideological demands.
>Third, the PMC is minimally organized as a class and acts in its own class interest only in the very broadest terms. It is second nature for the PMC to view creating more rules and more PMC jobs enforcing those rules as the solution to every problem, but the PMC appear to have no competent class leadership or strategy to keep the proliferating PMC jobs from being devalued and proletarianized. They are being squeezed economically, and we are going through a phase where neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat is listening to the PMC’s expert pronouncements. In fact, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat seem to be uniting behind, of all people, the anti-expert, Donald Trump!
>Fourth, as Erik Erikson explained, a mismatch between the expectations of young people and the ideologies and roles being offered to them goes hand in hand with instability. Based on the PMC’s current inability to reproduce itself effectively and its increasingly antagonistic relationship with the proletariat, the PMC may be contributing more to the downfall of a balanced and prosperous capitalist order than to reproducing it. >>2583988>Why would socialists make doctors and engineers work as farmhands? They wouldn't. "The PMC" is a large and nebulous grouping under which professionals such as "doctors" (which itself includes but isn't exclusive to medical physicians) theoretically belong, but which also includes all the bachelor-bearing middle managers of corporate America. Basically they
1. Have some kind of institutionally provided credential, like a bachelor's degree
2. They manage people or resources without themselves owning them
3. They perform some kind of intellectually significant but not necessarily materially productive labor
4. Their class position is tied to a greater or lesser degree by the management of symbolic capital, "clout".
So no, unless there was some kind of disaster where manual labor was in dire emergency need, doctors aren't going to be sent to the fields. But there are lots of people posting on blue sky and twitter right now about drumpf or transhumanists or whatever that would definitely be in danger of that.
>>2584008having asked and failed on this point in /leftybritpol/ i'll introduce it as an aside here: what does a socialist
service economy look like?
either via international division of labour (in the plain english meaning of those terms, not the old concept) or via handwave-y automation or outright magic or the assumption of say - the nauruan economy - where it's clearly a niche case where primary agricultural or secondary manufacturing work is inappropriate to local conditions.
this seems to me an interesting imaginative exercise, hopefully removed from the over-answered question of what a socialist manufacturing state or agricultural commune would look like.
>>2584013What do you mean by a "service economy?" Things like taxi service? Hospitality? Medical?
>>2583942You're vastly overthinking the labor aristocracy and bureaucrat-comprador capitalists to justify your homophobia. Judith Butler is not a representative of queer people anymore than Duterte is a representative of Philippino people.
>>2584019essentially, yes. specific definitions are something i'd leave open to whoever's doing the imagining (given artists, for example, are an edge-case.), but the thrust of it should be: not extracting or manufacturing physical commodities. (which is well covered ground.)
>>2584013>>2584029I mean, speaking as a service worker myself, I've given some thought to this and I think it'd be a kind of return to localism within the framework of the established "supermarket" model. I'm sorry if that sounds confusing, let me try and explain.
So, Trader Joe's where I work might be a good example of this. Shit one of the company's stated values are "We're a national chain of neighborhood stores", which amounts to a kind of decentralized leadership style and a lot of room for individual expression. All of our art is done by artists working in our backroom, some of my coworkers were also carpenters who'd help design new displays, we get to know some of the people in our locale and you'll get some feelgood stuff like folks giving a shoutout to a special needs guy who shopped in our store, like "Hello Franklin!" on a sign down his favorite aisle.
I think we can experiment less with standardization of aesthetic (you go into any Vons and even if the layout is different it looks like a Vons, for example) but more creativity from the workers themselves.
Like an element of Marx's work that I really likes is he doesn't condescend to workers, he considers most of us as already having the tools necessary to take over our jobs without the imposition of capitalists, and yeah a lot of us have different experiences managing sections of our store, writing orders, etc. And there's a really human drive to kind of leave your mark on it. When I ran liquor I wanted to do a "cocktail of the month" type thing where we'd have little slips of cocktail recipes and organize some products so it could be like "Hey, here's everything you need to make a margarita and here's how!"
So I imagine service would be slower in general, and some business models (like a Starbucks on every street corner, fast food models where you get your coffee or burger quickly and fuck off) may disappear entirely, but the upside is returning a sense of community and creativity to people.
Shit, another example: Fry's Electronics. There were some that had these crazy "Alice in Wonderland" designs and others that went X-Files kind of "UFOs and Greys", the idea that you could go to a store and no-two stores could look alike would be fun.
Or maybe we could go back to the old idea of what a mall could be, a kind of "modern agora" like its designer envisioned. Turn it into a place where you could get just about everything you needed and then have time to rest and just chat with people.
>>2583942>(university professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, artists, those types of people)I will start by saying all these people can be in vastly different position in the system, and even inside some of these professions their status (and ideology) can vary widely. Thats the problem with things like "PMC" and "middle class" concepts, these things are so large and vaguely defined, they're usually not very useful (also engineers are not supposed to be PMC iirc).
>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 violencerevolution and terrorism does not have aristocratic connotations, and your described "PMC" are overwhelmingly against these things and on the contrary vilify revolution and political violence in general. So thats already a loads of bullshit to base a reasoning on.
>They’re the ones that conjure up images of a big apocalyptic revolution are they really? pmc tend to be reformist imo, and the big apocalyptic revolution is used both by reactionaries to frighten people and revolutionaries who do intend to do a massive upheaval and change things radically. And of course, romantic liberals who will condemn everyone as reformist while not actually doing the work of building a mass party through incremental concrete struggle and gains while still having a revolutionary outlook and being ready to seize an opportunity rather than stay blocked on voooting
>the PMC hates the genuine working/class, because they see them as a threat to their powerI dont think thats true. The petit bourgeois do have this, because they directly struggle against workers on their real daily material interest and risk falling down to their level, but pmc are not threatened in any way by the workers, they have cultural and intellectual capital they cant really loose and dont directly depend on the workers exploitation. They just tend to sing to the tune of the guy with the coin, which explains why they're usually pushed to be mild reformist.
>they deliberately manipulate working-class movements in order to offset and eventually dissolve thembullshit, they just have naturally the skillset and status to take control and prominent positions in these movements, and they will often fuck up, but that absolutely not deliberate they're just often retards politically
>Plus, they love sexual promiscuity and use “leftism” in order to promote it.oh, spooked reactionary shit
>PMC romanticize terrorism, mass destruction involving killing and raping, and the “noble death” because the PMC are “gangsters.” wtf have you ever interacted with these fabled "PMC" who love mass destruction? me never
>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 irrationalthis is getting increasingly reactionary and ridiculous, we're reaching pol tier analysis
>After all, the marginalized find allies in college professors promoting queer studies and doctors handing out narcan, do they not?yeah you're just a thinly veiled polyp, unspook yourself before talking politics
>>2583987> So you’re paid well, you’re given a status above the common worker, but you still feel like for all your brains you’re powerless and ruled by idiots.now this, when I was working as a programmer, I've definitely felt it. Complying with retarded demands you know they're gonna ask you to change again because its stupid, and never having much input on what need to actually get done because despite all the skill, you're still a technician serving the business
but this aint pmc, more like labor aristocracy
>>2584013>what does a socialist service economy look like? It doesn't, read the political economy textbook. Services don't create value, they only exist to provide benefits to the population under socialism. It's only an economic category because it does employ people and consume resources. That's not a bad thing, by the way, the proportion of such workers is actually expected to increase under socialism as well, but it cannot be the foundation of a productive economy by definition. It can be an extension of the broader economy. If a tourist destination becomes socialist and starts providing those services in a socialist manner they will need to be subsidized like healthcare is subsidized by states today because that's just not a productive sphere. Capital gaslights us into thinking otherwise because of their perspective on the process.
Are engineers PMC? I thought they were just skilled working class…
>>2584052it's an office worker thing and probably describes most people's experiences doing office work, but it's also the sort of thing that perpetuates the illusion, your boss IS stupid, but it's also a comfy thought, isn't it? it's probably my boss' personal incompetence, toxicity, unfairness or stupidity what makes work suck, or what keeps me from moving vertically in the corporate ladder, or why the corporate structure feels so unfair and then they fantasize "if i could get rid of my boss" or "eventually i will be in my boss' shoes and I will be better" most people in office jobs can't seem to generalize beyond "MY boss sucks", or can't recognize that their boss is there for totally arbitrary reasons, and that probably most bosses would be just as shitty. unless you are somewhat radicalized to begin with, your biggest fantasy is eventually replacing your boss, just bidding for your turn.
>>2584071it's an arbitrary category and no one knows what PMC describes, really.
>>2584052>but this aint pmc, more like labor aristocracyThat's a fair point, my bad. Though to salvage it, I'd say in the case of university professors in particular there's a kind of contemptuousness of the fact that for as brilliant as they think their ideas are, society is still ruled by the rich and the stupids. I think there's some old quote by Plato where he said if the state isn't run by "learned warriors" or whatever than it'd be led by cowards and protected by idiots. 'Course that's his justification for elitism but I think we see in a lot of these university types a recognition of their own helplessness. No matter how novel the idea is, no matter how much it penetrates every aspect of our society, its just dead words.
For a more relevant Marx quote you've got the whole "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it" line. Well I think maybe some of these guys are frustrated that interpretation alone isn't change, but they also realize that they're impotent. Some latch onto the idea of a change wholly outside of human influence which imposes an order on the rest of us, I guess you could call these the Techno-Accelerationists obsessing over AGI. Other times they fantasize about some mythical revolution that they'd, naturally, be the leader of by virtue of their obvious merit where they can have their personal vendettas settled simply by filling out paperwork: "Kill this guy, imprison this guy, kill this guy…"
But I think the more powerless a person perceives themselves the more they fantasize about even wider and more radical change. A powerless guy gets cut off in traffic and he fantasizes about following the other guy home and scaring the shit out of him. A powerless professor gets ignored by his students and his book doesn't sell, and he starts to dream of prison camps and dictatorial power.
>>2584072
>let’s execute doctors guize!!!!
>>2584099What do you mean? What’s the point of killing doctors when doctors are crucial to a healthy society?
>>2584100ah i thought you were suggesting that we do execute some of the…. uh, particular
reactionary professions…..
>>2583942>Cutrone made the point that the PMC romanticize terrorism, mass destruction involving killing and raping, and the “noble death” because the PMC are “gangsters.”Cutrone is the epitome of a pseud. You're better off not listening to a word he says.
The "PMC" doesn't exist, idiot.
>>2583942>petit-bourgeois radicalismThese professions arent usually petit-bourgeoisie as they dont own means of production.
>>2584951You really think scientists are not wage slaves?
>>2583942>PMC (university professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, artists)I reject the premise of the question
>>2584999How are they wage slaves?
>>2584999It depends on the case because patents and other kinds of intellectual property are capital.
>>2583942The PMC are just left-wing versions of fascists. Love if the irrational and the rejection of the material for the spiritual are the ideological essence of fascism.
>>2585112they're paid a wage for their work, they dont own the laboratory or its equipment (for most), they dont have rent (for most), what more do you want
>>2585147large majority of scientist dont own patents, the company that pays them does, and sometimes the head of the laboratory.
>>2585301You are correct which is why I said it depends on the case. I would compare with software developers. In the past, it was much more possible for software developers to code an app as a small-business. Today, that sort of operation is becoming increasingly unviable. So anyhow the field is an awkward transition between petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy.
>>2585295>if your job requires a bachelor's degree or higher you are le left wing version of fascismpeople just say anything on here huh
i saw a job opening on indeed for bachelors degrees chemists to work in an entry level laboratory job and it paid $17 dollars an hour (i made the same $ per hour as a dishwasher)
scientists are not petit-bourgeois lmao.
>>2585332They play the role of engineering society and keeping actual proletarians in check. That’s PMC.
>>2585341the vast majority of scientists do not "engineer society" in any meaningful way.
scientists will exist under socialism and their skills will be of great use to a future socialist state.
>>2583942>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?Queer ppl tend to be proletarian and not lumpenproletarian. The identity-based false consciousness of queer ppl is not any different from the false consciousness of other proletarians.
>>2583942>Am I right or is there more to it?this might be the most idiotic smoothbrain thread I've seen on leftypol, I hope that you're just ragebaiting by quoting the most cringe armchair pseuds. Read Marx, please, I'm begging you
>>2584071>Are engineers PMC? I thought they were just skilled working classskilled at managing plantation slaves, the bourgeois feminist hero Ada Lovelace who worked with Charles Babbgage for example:
https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/and of course:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust>>2585324>if your job requires a bachelor's degree or higher you are le left wing version of fascism"you're crazy for saying 'Noam Chomsky is part of the Jeffrey Epstein class" HISTORY HAS VINDICATED ME!
>>2585355How is OP wrong?
>>2583991>>2584097>>2584099>>2584100>>2584101>The revolution will, in fact, need doctors and nursesWhich is why I find the "DOCTORS ARE COPS, HOSPITALS ARE CARCERAL IN NATURE, ABOLISH DOCTORS!" rhetoric to be so mind-numblingly cringe, especially coming out of a pandemic that killed millions of people worldwide and would have killed ten times as many people had doctors and nurses not been there to provide care.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR2sZ0fD2DM/Ironically, the people pushing the anti-doctor rhetoric happen to be PMC themselves. This person in vidrel is a doula, so they're in competition with doctors.
>>2583978>The marginalized have to take what they can get but that's because their class position makes them deeply vulnerable and thus exploitable, not because they are natural allies of the pmc.I assumed leftist intellectuals favour the lumpen because they view the lumpen as a more "pure" revolutionary subject, as in they don't adhere to the values or social norms of capitalist/bourgeois society and thus they have more of an incentive to break the reproduction of capital.
>>2585474>"DOCTORS ARE COPS, HOSPITALS ARE CARCERAL IN NATURE, ABOLISH DOCTORS!"So I guess this blathering imbecile believes Israel did nothing wrong by killing all those doctors and nurses in Gaza then, eh?
>>2585474>>2585498Unironically, this mentality reminds me of how Foucault's hatred of the medical establishment was a key factor in him going on to support neoliberalism.
>>2583978>The PMC's irrationality is a measure of what they have to and are willing to do in order to secure their class position. Since it's unlimited, they can be no proportionality, because acting "rationally" would mean the elimination of their class and probably themselves.A very good example of this (and where the interests of the PMC clash with those of the working-class, or white working-class at least) is the subject of police and prison abolition. We know that the police exist to protect capital, that cops originated as slave patrol, that prisons are barbaric, and that all communists want to eventually see police and prisons abolished. However, the main proponents of police and prison abolition are the PMC, especially college/university professors and social workers. They usually live in areas like middle-class suburbs or gentrification stations in cities where street crime is very low. They don't have to worry about being mugged in the middle of the night or having their homes broken into and their laptops stolen. But above all, they have a class interest in getting rid of police: the idea is to either have social workers (who are PMC themselves) replace cops, and/or take preventative measures by pouring funds into healthcare, education, and better urban planning, all things which give power to the PMC. The (white) working-class, on the other hand, wants more cops in their hoods because they crave stability. They believe more policing will mean less crime that they have to deal with day-to-day. Of course, they don't understand the role of the police but they don't seem to care.
>>2585474>https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR2sZ0fD2DM/>ABOLISH DOCTORS>use herbal medicines instead like old midwives used to tee heeOkay, so what if I have fucked up kidneys and need dialysis? Can turmeric and oregano fix that?
These people are the wellness influencers of the left. How much longer until they claim vaccines are white supremacist?
The mfs screaming about PMC are the ones that then say China is socialist lmao
>>2585572And yet China has the best doctors and universities on earth.
>>2585589damn,PMC country.
did you know India is one of the country with highest home ownership ? sounds like labor aristocracy to me
>>2585474All I'm getting from this reel is she's mad she can get a license.
>>2585559She’ll be singing a different tune once she’s diagnosed with ovarian cancer and needs chemo. Unless she thinks witches with herbs can cure that too.
>>2585497>I assumed leftist intellectuals favour the lumpen because they view the lumpen as a more "pure" revolutionary subject, as in they don't adhere to the values or social norms of capitalist/bourgeois society and thus they have more of an incentive to break the reproduction of capital.It depends on what you mean by "leftist intellectuals." If you're talking about the sort of university professor, social worker pmc type that's the subject of the thread, they "favor" them only insofar as they're useful to maintaining their class position.
The "lumpen" is extremely useful for them for a variety of reasons. Like, as a class abstraction, they're otherized enough that, say, a grad student can study them and make their career off of their expertise. And just like all categories of vulnerable people under capitalism, they're able to be endlessly "advocated for" or "fought for" without ever having to meaningfully interact with them, provide any substantial material changes, or ever threatening the pmc class position or capitalism in general.
So it really depends on what and who you're talking about specifically, because there are plenty of pmc types which "favor" them but rely on their existence for their own position, and would as soon let them run a train on their own mothers than contemplate any sort of revolution with them as the subject.
>>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
Unique IPs: 48