I haven't been following this discussion for several days, so excuse my
clumsiness if I have missed some nuances, but...
Intellectual workers who play a role in the maintenance of the domination
of the capitalist state, like for example many teachers who
bureaucratically uphold the norms of bourgeois hegemony by participating in
the brainwashing (building of false consciousness) of children and parents
with the values of the ruling class.... Let's not forget that in Marxist
terms these white collar folks are exhibiting a form of bourgeois
consciousness. For them this is a form of unconsciousness class treason,
because materially they are members of the working class, they are not
bourgeois. This consciousness is typical of the petit bourgeoisie, which
is generally that group of non-bourgeois who are self-employed (ranging
from low income shopkeepers/taxi operators to big time lawyers and other
professionals). But the workers are defined as such (no matter how white
their collars) by the materiality of their economic existence, their
relationship to the means of production: they are wage slaves, they work
for an employer...except for the occasional stock option deal, they don't
own the business.
This seems trivial now, but in times of working class upsurge and/or
revolution, when the leadership of the working class stands in front of
massive demonstrations and makes explicit class demands on the ruling class
(like "Land, Bread, and Peace"!!), that's when the consciousness question
gets clarified and polarized, and most of the intellectual workers realize
which side they're on. Of course, there are always a few class traitors,
those who are so ideologically committed to capitalist rule that they stand
with the bosses. In the meantime (while the working class is quiescent),
we can look at the occasional instances of "proletarianization" of
consciousness of intellectual workers, such as the recent attempts of
wage-paid doctors (hospital employees) who have been trying to organize
into a union (and dragging along with them some petit bourgeois,
self-employed doctors who are beginning to be proletarianized by their
relationships with HMOs), likewise among some groups of lawyers (i forget
the circumstances), and the layoffs of computer programmers every so often.
In brief, the conception of income based (statistical medians, etc) "middle
class" is a bourgeois construct of sociologists to hide the Marxist
conception of social classes, which is based on one's relationship to
material production, either being a wage slave (however well paid) or not.
Pete Farruggio
At 10:42 AM 1/26/00 , Phillip White wrote:
>xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >Paul H. Dillon
> writes:
> > However, as we've also seen, intellectual workers tend convert
> >their specific relation to the productive process into the basis for new
> >kinds of domination (bureaucratic domination).
>
>
> yeah! i think Pete F. has pointed this out several times - and
> it's
>what Leigh Star has indicated keeps methods of oppression normalized -
>routinized - from, as Eugene has pointed out, boarding schools for
>native americans, to, as Ogbu has pointed out, normal schools of public
>education, including schools of education within universities.
>
> and i think too of the few prison guards who gave Vaclav Havel paper,
>food, bits and pieces of respite from the normalizing routine of prison -
> in fact, Havel's description of the format norms imposed on him by the
>prison director on the structure of letters were remarkably similar to
>what i experienced in high school. yes, forty years ago, but i notice now
>that high school teachers use the formatting capabilities of word
>processing to set the present normings of what a paper should _look_ like.
>
>phillip
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