[Edited Message Follows] [Reason: Editorial corrections] Tony, I don’t believe the issue is as thorny and confused as you suggest above.
My impression is that most on this list were salaried employees who belonged to unions representing academics, public school teachers, government employees, social workers and other occupations requiring post-secondary education and in many cases advanced degrees. We were the beneficiaries of the expansion of the welfare state and the transition to a predominantly service economy. We had been preceded into the workforce and the trade union movement by a similar influx into new office buildings of stenographers, typists, file clerks, telephone operators, and other clerical workers serving the needs of the expanding industrial economy. Only a minority outside these new “proletarianized” strata remained as self-employed individuals belonging to the petty-bourgeoisie. Reducing the class to its industrial proletariat only accounts for a third of today’s wage and salary earners. It's not only analytically false but serves the interests of the bourgeoisie to perpetuate the illusion that college and university educated employees are outside the class with interests apart from and antagonistic to those of the industrial and clerical workers. These illusions are promoted by mainstream economists and ideologues who define class in relation to income rather than employment status. They are reinforced by well-intentioned Marxist and radical theorists who insist that the proletariat, as when the Manifesto was published in 1848, comprises only those engaged in factory work and resource extraction and in the transportation and storage infrastructure which supports value producing industries. The workers themselves fall prey to these illusions. They’re most widely held by the highest earners closest to the managers who control the enterprise but they're shared at all levels of the workforce. Their illusions are typically dispelled and their consciousness transformed when they join a union, willingly or otherwise. This is when they learn through their own experience that their needs are best satisfied collectively rather than individually. At any rate, that’s what I observed over three decades of activity not only as a journalist in and later negotiator for the Newspaper Guild, a shop steward in the Steelworkers and organizer for the SEIU, but finally and most tellingly as a senior official in the federal Social Science Employees Association composed of well-paid economists, sociologists, statisticians, librarians and other university graduates and their technical and clerical support staff. Cumulatively, these three strata form a class in themselves. As the economy stagnates and the welfare state steadily contracts accompanied by deteriorating working and living conditions, they are beginning to show signs of becoming a class for themselves - not least the youngest university-educated cohort drawn to the DSA. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42405): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42405 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120177484/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
