White-collar salariat

[A.J.]

are apparently "objectively working class because they don't own any means of production" :glare:

At least according to a strange little social-democratic sect that styles itself as the "committee for a workers international".(personally, I think this statement is an attempt at self-justification for their continued existence as their membership seems to consist entirely of..........white-collar salariat!)

Sort of loses sight of the fact that in imperialist Britain(and I appreciate that it's a different kettle of fish in other parts of the world) these sort of people have traditionally viewed themselves as being, rightly or wrongly, middle class.
Not perhaps without some basis as they mostly enjoy a lifestyle(big house in the suburbs, two cars in the driveway etc.) that wouldn't typically be thought of as proletarian.

Regardless, on a broader point, the issue of social class is a lot more complex and nuanced as merely owning or not owning means of production and I believe that such a crude over-simplification as the above erroneous postulation does marxism a great disservice as a science.

[Lord Testicles]

White collar workers are working class regardless of how they view themselves. You're going to have to put a better case against them being working class than just they own big houses and can drive two cars.

[The Feral Underclass]

are apparently "objectively working class because they don't own any means of production" :glare:

At least according to a strange little social-democratic sect that styles itself as the "committee for a workers international".(personally, I think this statement is an attempt at self-justification for their continued existence as their membership seems to consist entirely of..........white-collar salariat!)

Sort of loses sight of the fact that in imperialist Britain(and I appreciate that it's a different kettle of fish in other parts of the world) these sort of people have traditionally viewed themselves as being, rightly or wrongly, middle class.
Not perhaps without some basis as they mostly enjoy a lifestyle(big house in the suburbs, two cars in the driveway etc.) that wouldn't typically be thought of as proletarian.

Regardless, on a broader point, the issue of social class is a lot more complex and nuanced as merely owning or not owning means of production and I believe that such a crude over-simplification as the above erroneous postulation does marxism a great disservice as a science.

I actually think there is something in what you're saying.

This section of the working class may see themselves as middle class and with it have aspirations (something the Tories have been able to tap into), but ultimately they are working class. The issue, for me at least, is that these aspirations and perceived social and cultural position obscures their class interest, and it makes them a particularly difficult section of the class for real communists to organise within. Unfortunately the left in the UK have primarily, if not exclusively, focused on this section in recent years. That's why we have seen a trade union movement fighting self-interested, sectoral, defensive struggles that openly criticise more militant elements from other sections of the class and capitulate at the most minor of compromise. Although it seems like they're not even pretending any more. The latest instance being Len McCluskey's climb down on double threshold (basically making it more difficult to ballot for strike action), which he is saying Unite are prepared to drop opposition to and harking on about how conscious he is that people find striking "illegitimate and irresponsible."

[Rafiq]

They are proletarians. In our tradition, we have always recognized that there are certain sections of the proletariat which are more receptive toward Socialism - the idea is one of diffusion. Trotsky believed the black working class, for example, should be focused on and that its struggles would "drag along the white working class" along with it.

Of course, perhaps we can understand them in terms of how we understand managers - 'technically' proletarians but in a wider context corporate and financial functionaries. Perhaps a person in an administrative place of government would be "proletarian" as far as how he earns money, but in a wider context his relationship to production is to serve as a functionary for the state.

We should therefore assert this distinction: A basket-ball player is a "proletarian", but this alone does not explain his immense wealth - understanding his relationship to a wider social context, as an entertainer, accounts for this, which is why the vast majority of proletarians are not nearly as wealthy. The same therefore goes for "white-collar" workers, because we live in a society which has underwent an increased socialization of labor, the proletariat can no longer be assumed to be a monolithic bloc (and it never really was), for with the increased socialization of labor comes the specialization, professionalization of certain jobs that are necessary to, for example, facilitate bureaucratic corporate planning, matters of finance, and so on. Come a revolution, the white-collar "working class" might simply, like the Intelligentsia, be split into two, purely by merit of proximity and chance.

[Hatshepsut]

Not an easy question, as "white collar" simply means "works in an office on administrative tasks" rather than directly in production. Not all white collar people live in big homes; a fair segment of this workforce is nearly low-income. Just think of the receptionists and cashiers who work in doctor's offices and convenience stores. Meanwhile, other white collar folks, along with most sports stars, own large amounts of capital in the form of real estate or mutual funds. Class divisions have gotten more complex since Marx's time when owners rarely worked for someone else.

I'm not sure the capital-owning section is still part of the proletariat, unless the amount of capital held is small enough that one couldn't live off it more than a few months. Most top managers and athletes do come from proletarian backgrounds, however, without grandparents in the House of Lords. Unlike the old European bourgeoisie, they usually start out with little or no wealth. The first-generation rich condition applies to many American capitalists as well.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It is a point that shows limitations to Marx's ideas on class. Whilst at the most reductive level we can still divide societies into ruling class and working class, it is true that the working class is by no means homogeneous; arguably layers of the working class have at times diametrically opposed social and cultural interests whilst sharing a base economic interest in ending bourgeois exploitation.

The solution does seem relatively clear, though, especially at a time when many previously 'comfortable' salaried workers who may have thought of themselves middle class and had aspirations of living that 'exciting' suburban lifestyle, are instead now finding themselves - ourselves - struggling to see how we will ever achieve anything like that lifestyle; at best we see a possibility of renting long-term and living off salary pay-check to salary pay-check, not unlike non-salaried comrades. Because of this precariousness of the situation of the white salariat, it makes sense to put more effort into highlighting shared economic interests amongst the working class - white and non-white; salaried, waged, student, and unemployed; straight and LGBTQ; able-bodied or not etc.

Would it perhaps be fair to suggest that, according to Marxist theory, while workers obviously are heterogeneous and therefore have many different and sometimes opposing social and cultural wants, needs, and interests, we still share to a great extent the same economic needs and suffer similar economic exploitation - to a greater or lesser extent of course - and therefore we should respectfully accept and embrace our social differences?

[N. Senada]

White collars are proletarian.
Contemporary society could be liquid as you want, but proletariat and bourgeoisie are still in charge as major classes.
Proletarian are all those who live, not by invest a capital, big or small, but selling one's labour-force, more or less easily repleaceable, due to its abundance on the market, for a salary.
There's always an hard tension between bourgeoisie and proletariat which inform the small-beourgeoisie.
Classes are not castes.
In capitalism your're not marked for life. You can switch from a class to another (although it's really hard for proletarian to became capitalist, due to many structural factors of capitalism itself, but a capitalist or more often a small capitalist could go banrkupt and not be able to avoid the proletarization).
If you take a look in a factory, you will see many different kind of workers: common workers, technicians, maintainers, specialized workers, employee.
Those are all proletarian. Still, there's a great competition between them, first because of their different salary.
The high managers, the direction of the factory are formally salariat, but their are definetely not proletarian.
Their salary comes fully from the suplus of value product from the workers.
They're coopted in the bourgeoisie.

Marx definition's of classes it's definitely not limited.
Marxism cathegories and method is not some kind of hack'n'slashing the present in some squared concept.
Analyzing the society in a marxist way it's something really hard, that's why you need a party and an internationale.
You cannot accomplish such a task all alone.

[WideAwake]

You know highly developed countries, highly devoled scientific countries like USA, European countries and even second world and third world countries like Mexico and India, their ruling classes have the abilities to fool and trick the working class masses (who are really poor even if they own BMWs), into the belief that they are members of the middle class and living a middle class life, just one step away, one ladder away, one class away from the upper classes.

What I am trying to state, is that real wealth, self-realization, and full personal happiness is not really based on what kind of car people have, on the size of a house, and other externalities. But really on how each individual feels physically and mentally.

For example people can own 10 new BMWs and still be poor and live a third world life

Real human development (according to Alfred Adler, Freud, Carl Jung, and many other psychologists requires a relatively comfortable lifestyle, a daily routine with most emotional, psychologic and spiritual basic needs fulfilled, great health, great physiology, superior knowledge (from college education, extra learned abilities (like knowing 2 or 3 languages, playing guitar, piano great reading, writing and communication skills. And exercising the dreams and goals that each individual has of their own taste. Like being able for each individual to do what ever they like the most (Great cooking chefs, pilots, lawyers, doctors, architecture, politics, philosophy, painting, musician, acting etc)

That's what real development and real wealth is really all about. But in countries like USA you have a large majority of poor people, who really are poor, physically, mentally and emotionally, with zero happiness, zero self-realization, because the capitalist system itself is a system that is almost like a monarchy of the medieval ages, where only those in the higher economic and social classes of any capitalist society have access to what can really determine and lead to a full happy life (not cars, not houses) but college education, dental services, great healthy services, gyms, great healthy diets, and pleasures

But these services these important things that are needed for a full life are banned to most americans, they are off-limits to most americans because of their very very high price. In America literally nobody can join a college to study medical science, and law. Americans even though they can drive a brand new Mercedes Benz 2015 model, still live a shitty life of an extential vaccuum because those things (like college degrees, masters education, dental services, etc) are super expensive in the american capitalist free market system and can only be enjoyed by celebrities, and people that are members of the upper classes (Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan, etc)

So even though that proletariat who thinks that they are part of middle class, and who have big houses, BMWs, big cars, still live a sad life, an empty life lacking in those things that are required for a full life, because those things that are requiered for a full life in USA are super super super super expensive (college education, dental health, gyms, healthy diets, vacation cruises, theme parks etc)

So what we really have in countries like UK, USA, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, etc are 80% of the population people of most consumerist industrial countries, driving beautiful cars, owning beautiful houses, driving in beautiful roads, beautiful bridges, but who are still poor and who live a poor life. But because they are not aware of their own poverty (because they think that new cars and externalities are all that is needed to reach a full life), they still support the capitalist system. But you don't have to be psychiatrist face-reader, to see with your own eyes, how sad, how depressed, are most citizens of nations with industrial consumerist capitalist economic models


.


,



are apparently "objectively working class because they don't own any means of production" :glare:

At least according to a strange little social-democratic sect that styles itself as the "committee for a workers international".(personally, I think this statement is an attempt at self-justification for their continued existence as their membership seems to consist entirely of..........white-collar salariat!)

Sort of loses sight of the fact that in imperialist Britain(and I appreciate that it's a different kettle of fish in other parts of the world) these sort of people have traditionally viewed themselves as being, rightly or wrongly, middle class.
Not perhaps without some basis as they mostly enjoy a lifestyle(big house in the suburbs, two cars in the driveway etc.) that wouldn't typically be thought of as proletarian.

Regardless, on a broader point, the issue of social class is a lot more complex and nuanced as merely owning or not owning means of production and I believe that such a crude over-simplification as the above erroneous postulation does marxism a great disservice as a science.

[Recke410]

White collar workers are working class regardless of how they view themselves. You're going to have to put a better case against them being working class than just they own big houses and can drive two cars.

From the communist perspective regarding relationship to the means of production, they might technically be working class, yet any blue collar worker who has worked in a shared workplace with white collar workers can tell you, they lack any sense of connection to the more typical worker, are often hostile and when it comes to solidarity regarding organising, they will never risk what they have to stand with you.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

From the communist perspective regarding relationship to the means of production, they might technically be working class, yet any blue collar worker who has worked in a shared workplace with white collar workers can tell you, they lack any sense of connection to the more typical worker, are often hostile and when it comes to solidarity regarding organising, they will never risk what they have to stand with you.

This is a silly generalisation.

If you want to reduce the 'revolution' to the tiniest group of suitable candidates then you are no better than the liberal, 'politically correct for no reason' brigade who also don't really understand working class politics.

Marx was very clear: if you have to sell your labour power to survive, then you are a worker. If you live off of the labour power of others, off of accumulated capital or other rentier activities, you are a capitalist. That is the only distinction we need in the economic sphere, it is as good today as it was 150 years ago. There are no 'better and worse' revolutionaries; we are all workers and whilst accepting and celebrating our differences we should focus on what unites us and not try to stratify and divide ourselves.

[WideAwake]

Recke: You are sort of right. You know I love observing the behaviour of people, their facial expressions, their physical gestures (body language), and I've noticed how hostile are white-collar workers, (like nurses, bank employees, workers in suits and ties) in Wal Marts and many other public places toward lower-class, low-income people. Most people behave according to a given script, like a movie script, and maybe (I don't know if this is true), white-collar right-wing workers like nurses, bank workers, US government high-salary workers are trained and educated in their universities or anywhere else not to mingle with the low income class

And this hostility is more powerful in the white european right-wing high-salary working class. You don't have to be a psychoanalyst to see with your own self how many white european nurses shop at Wal Marts and popular stores, and observer their hostility and their angry behaviour by observing their facial expressions and physical gestures

This hostility of middle class people against poor people is not so powerful in other societies. In America this psychologic cold war of middle class people against lower class people is very very noticetable.

Sometimes I dress like a homeless beggar, and I go to stores and places where middle class right-wing white european americans shop to see how hostile they are against me










From the communist perspective regarding relationship to the means of production, they might technically be working class, yet any blue collar worker who has worked in a shared workplace with white collar workers can tell you, they lack any sense of connection to the more typical worker, are often hostile and when it comes to solidarity regarding organising, they will never risk what they have to stand with you.

[Recke410]

This is a silly generalisation.

If you want to reduce the 'revolution' to the tiniest group of suitable candidates then you are no better than the liberal, 'politically correct for no reason' brigade who also don't really understand working class politics.

Marx was very clear: if you have to sell your labour power to survive, then you are a worker. If you live off of the labour power of others, off of accumulated capital or other rentier activities, you are a capitalist. That is the only distinction we need in the economic sphere, it is as good today as it was 150 years ago. There are no 'better and worse' revolutionaries; we are all workers and whilst accepting and celebrating our differences we should focus on what unites us and not try to stratify and divide ourselves.

It is stupid to ignore reality. For example when teachers went on strike the cleaning staff and kitchen staff of most schools did so out of solidarity. When cleaners have tried to organise a strike and action teachers offered no support whatsoever.

If you want to live in a fantasy land where white collar worker will stand in solidarty with poor workers go ahead, but any poor worker with any experience with white collar workers knows the reality.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It is stupid to ignore reality. For example when teachers went on strike the cleaning staff and kitchen staff of most schools did so out of solidarity. When cleaners have tried to organise a strike and action teachers offered no support whatsoever.

If you want to live in a fantasy land where white collar worker will stand in solidarty with poor workers go ahead, but any poor worker with any experience with white collar workers knows the reality.

I said you're generalising. I'm sure there are examples of higher-earning white collar workers who have a numbed or diminished sense of class consciousness. But you don't have a monopoly on experiences. I have seen teachers strike without the support of auxiliary staff and I have seen elements of the salariat support cleaning and auxiliary staff's struggles, too.

I am always very suspicious of people who seek to push their world view across using a very limited and questionable set of examples, or even with no examples other than 'I've seen this...'. The fact is that much of the white salariat as we call it lives in or on the precipice of poverty and that in places like the UK struggle for housing and to gain adequate pay and conditions. If you want to exclude every salaried and white worker from your revolution then you may just find that your revolution doesn't expand beyond a hired room and half a dozen of the same old faces. Alternatively we can attempt to express true class solidarity by recognising that amongst our differences we have a shared experience of exploitation, misery and indignity.

[Sewer Socialist]

Marx was very clear: if you have to sell your labour power to survive, then you are a worker. If you live off of the labour power of others, off of accumulated capital or other rentier activities, you are a capitalist. That is the only distinction we need in the economic sphere, it is as good today as it was 150 years ago. There are no 'better and worse' revolutionaries; we are all workers and whilst accepting and celebrating our differences we should focus on what unites us and not try to stratify and divide ourselves.

It doesn't matter if Marx was clear. Marx isn't some deity, some clairvoyant, some mystic whose unique dialectical wizardry permitted him to see the future. Marx was a materialist, a scientific socialist. Analyzing the material world, analyzing history - this is what is important about Marxism. In fact, this is what Marx was the clearest on. Just as Marx analyzed working class movements, so must we.

While white-collar workers are workers, and they may certainly contribute to proletarian class struggle, they have never been a particularly militant element of it as a whole, and it's idealistic to ignore that just because they are part of the working class.

[The Feral Underclass]

Marx was very clear: if you have to sell your labour power to survive, then you are a worker. If you live off of the labour power of others, off of accumulated capital or other rentier activities, you are a capitalist. That is the only distinction we need in the economic sphere, it is as good today as it was 150 years ago. There are no 'better and worse' revolutionaries; we are all workers and whilst accepting and celebrating our differences we should focus on what unites us and not try to stratify and divide ourselves.

But that's not a particularly useful analysis when you need to have a clear understanding of contemporary reality and how to build strategy.

[Recke410]

It doesn't matter if Marx was clear. Marx isn't some deity, some clairvoyant, some mystic whose unique dialectical wizardry permitted him to see the future. Marx was a materialist, a scientific socialist. Analyzing the material world, analyzing history - this is what is important about Marxism. In fact, this is what Marx was the clearest on. Just as Marx analyzed working class movements, so must we.

While white-collar workers are workers, and they may certainly contribute to proletarian class struggle, they have never been a particularly militant element of it as a whole, and it's idealistic to ignore that just because they are part of the working class.

Mrx predicted LLC's could do away with the capitalist class, marx compiled a good analysis of capitalism, but for all his assertions and predictions, he might as well of been Alex Jones. He gets an equal number of things right. In other words, Marx wasn't blessed by the lord of the light.

[Rafiq]

Mrx predicted LLC's could do away with the capitalist class, marx compiled a good analysis of capitalism, but for all his assertions and predictions

And what predictions are those? Can you give me one prediction Marx "got wrong"? For example, common assumptions about Marx is that he predicted the 'decline' of the middling classes when this turned out to be wrong. As it happens, the "middling classes" in questions were small artisans, landed peasantry, small workshops, etc. - and these did indeed disappear. Marx did not even make any pretense to "prediction" here - it was something he was actively seeing. Regarding the mdidling classes that formed after the Second world war, these were an anomalous class wrought from "scientifically planned capitalism" in fear of Soviet Communism. This class has been disappearing for the past 30 years. Also, you don't understand what constitutes a "small business" back then. When Marx, Lenin spoke of small businesses, they referred to businesses which employed five-ten people. People will say that "small businesses employ half of the workforce", but what is stupid here is the fact that small businesses are defined as businesses which have 500 or less employees. A business that had 500 employees would have not been considered a small business back in their day - if anything it has reflected just how greatly the socialization of labor and the centralization of production has occurred in changing standards.

Another prediction ascribed to Marx is the notion that capitalism drives the proletariat down to bare destitution, and that it will indeed do this. The problem is that this is not so much a "prediction" as it is an assessment of general tendencies of capitalist production - and again, it is a correct observation. What prevented this from actualizing had nothing to do with the benevolence of capitalists, but the immense and powerful labor struggles which were able to not only enact laws in its favor, but establish almost institutionally recognized labor norms that made destitution inconceivable in an advanced capitalist society - or a "late capitalist society". This is true, however, only for some countries. We can reckon that most of the world lives at near-destitution levels, that this is the general tendency capitalism drives the worker. But any idiot can see that as far as the relation between capital and labor goes, the general tendency is to drive the worker to bare destitution.

Because of the developments mentioned, the qualifications for "destitution" have changed, in our de-industrialized consumer societies. If destitution simply qualifies as "living", then in today's society, the qualifications for being a living person who can be a part of modern society have exceeded the threshold of merely being able to survive. Which brings us to another point: the increased socialization of labor, and the centralization of capitalist production into monopoly. This was a prediction Marx got correct - which many of our anti-Marxist adversaries fail to mention, and it absolutely coincides with the direct utilization of state power to fulfill the direct whims of capital. The increased socialization of labor, in other words, has turned the state into a sort of "planning mechanism" for capitalists/capital, so the tendency to drive workers to levels of destitution no longer occurs on the factory floor or the shop floor, but at the level of state policy - irrevocably tied to the ways in which businesses lower or increase wages for their workers. This shows that not only the technical, but the social and organizational pre-requisite to socialism has never been more possible than today.

Finally, the last prediction is "revolution". This is a pure straw-man, plain and simple. Marx never conceived the proletarian revolution to be some blind, inevitable historical force - if he thought this, he and Engels would have never dedicated their lives to bolstering the worker's movement. When Marx and Engels said the proletarian revolution is inevitable, they did not give us a specific time frame - they only told us that no mode of production can succeed capitalism, and even if this takes 500 years - in the words of Kautsky - people will eventually come to accept socialism. So the historical point they were making is that "eventually, people will willfully fight for socialism and succeed in it". They did not say when this would happen, or claim that they were neutral spectators merely "observing" this. They were engaged in assuming this role themselves, which is why the second international placed such a huge emphasis on "historic mission" - socialism was inevitable, but this inevitability could only be expressed through willful revolutionary agents. Inevitability and possibility here coincide, but the choice of words relegates back to the fact that "possibility" assumes it is a mere possibility among many others (as far as the succession of capitalism or an alternative society).

[Hatshepsut]

Marx dealt with apparent working-class divisions by introducing the concept of the "false consciousness," which presumably would extend from the ethnic nationalities of his day to race and gender issues roiling the news today. As a couple of posts above mine assert, Marx can be said to have propounded general laws for history more than advancing the business of prediction. The class system has indeed undergone changes with the former, pauperized factory labor force now having mostly been relocated to developing countries under neocolonial arrangements. Therefore we can't apply his categories literally; in particular we see that certain large elements of the service and office corps play very different roles in 2015 than they did in 1860, because information & finance have become consumer products, no longer restricted to being ancillary necessities for capitalists.

Another thing that's changed even more recently is loss of the strike's effectiveness as a weapon for labor. While scabs have always existed, modern firms can in addition source needed products from a global economy. Or services as well; schoolteachers can now be hired through Manpower Associates in the USA, which keeps a bevy of them permanently on its rolls, ready to start work immediately. Very efficient, compared with the recruitment of scabs each time a strike occurs. In fact, the National Education Association may well disappear as U.S. school districts move to privatize the schools under charter; the latter often hire nonunion teachers. Further teacher strikes will only accelerate this movement. Cleaning staff are in a hopeless position as 13 million illegal immigrants stand in the wings to replace them, a trend already in place independently of pickets.

We can no longer make assumptions regarding "who's in solidarity with us" based solely on occupation. Some white-collar workers are in fact on our side, while some poorly paid manual laborers are dead set against us. Or the other way around. Capitalism, in its need for growth, doesn't usually reduce Western workers to destitution via low wages; instead it does so by firing them. So, it may be the segments of the working class which capitalism is making redundant that will take on the greatest revolutionary potential.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Further teacher strikes will only accelerate this movement.

I don't agree at all. There is no way, logically, that the capitalists can recruit a 'reserve army' that is ready and able to slot into the work done by the in-work section of the working class at a moment's notice. Numerically that is impossible. The answer therefore is not to disavow strikes but to work towards a situation where not only can public and private sector workers strike, but strike together, strike often, and strike for a decent length of time. One day strikes do little other than raise morale/give the impression of threat to capital. Cross-sector and longer strikes would do far greater actual damage to capital. It is a strategy that should not be cast away.


Cleaning staff are in a hopeless position as 13 million illegal immigrants stand in the wings to replace them, a trend already in place independently of pickets.

What sort of language is this? Nobody is 'illegal'. Besides, auxiliary staff like cleaners are not in a hopeless position because of the size of pool of substitute workers, least of all 'immigrants'. Cleaners are in a hopeless position, in some cases, because capital works them into the ground and treats them like shit, whilst paying them not even close to what their labour deserves. That is the cause of their hopelessness, not '13 million illegal immigrants'.


We can no longer make assumptions regarding "who's in solidarity with us" based solely on occupation. Some white-collar workers are in fact on our side, while some poorly paid manual laborers are dead set against us. Or the other way around.

If this is to be accepted, then there is no point trying to raise the class and political consciousness of workers, since some workers are now 'naturally' for us and 'naturally' against us. This strikes me as a defeatist outlook; you're correct that people have diverse philosophical (or in some cases non-philosophical) beliefs, but anyone who accepts even in the broadest terms Marx's analysis of society recognises that in general workers who hold pro-capitalist beliefs do so out of ignorance - of the world around them and of their position in the world.


Capitalism, in its need for growth, doesn't usually reduce Western workers to destitution via low wages; instead it does so by firing them. So, it may be the segments of the working class which capitalism is making redundant that will take on the greatest revolutionary potential.

This isn't true, though. In the UK, for example, we have the highest 'employment' for several years, yet capital maintains its power by ensuring that wages remain low, out-of-work and in-work welfare is reduced to push workers into even greater poverty, and where it doesn't 'fire them', it uses tools like zero-hours contracts to ensure that even with high 'employment', in reality the amount of work done is spread out amongst workers and power is decidedly with managers and capitalists, rather than workers.

[Comrade Jacob]

Workers but privileged workers.

[EL KAISER]

White collars are proletarian...
If you take a look in a factory, you will see many different kind of workers: common workers, technicians, maintainers, specialized workers, employee.
Those are all proletarian. Still, there's a great competition between them, first because of their different salary.
The high managers, the direction of the factory are formally salariat, but their are definetely not proletarian.
Their salary comes fully from the suplus of value product from the workers.
They're coopted in the bourgeoisie.

I'm sorry, but why are you diferentiating "the managers and directors" with white-collar workers? Managers ARE white-collar workers. Managers DO office-administrative work (in their case, they administer a factory, for example) and they receive a salary in return for their labor-power, which is EASILY replaceable with other person. They ALSO don't possess Means of Production. They have all characteristics of a proletariat, So why do you include white collar workers in the proletarian class but you don't include managers?

[C. Macguigan]

Highly recommended on this is C. Wright Mills - White Collar.

IT is a shame he died so young. he was set up to be one of the best 'theorists' of the postwar order. anyway I highly recommend it. some of it is not obviously pertinent or relevant but is a good read.