A.J.
16th January 2008, 13:11
http://www.mltranslations.org/US/Rpo/classes/classes3.htm
......As the small proprietors have been steadily eliminated, another intermediate stratum has been created and has grown alongside the proletariat – the petty bourgeois employees. The wage-earning petty bourgeoisie is comprised of management and supervisory personnel, sales representatives, professional and upper-level technical workers and military and police officers. These strata make up an intermediate group between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, sharing characteristics with both.
They share with the bourgeoisie a separation from manual labor, which has been delegated almost exclusively to the proletariat. Their work, in general, falls in the categories of mental labor that in the past, before the colossal concentration of production that characterizes developed capitalism, were the realm of the wealthy classes that owned property. Today the ownership of productive property has been limited to a tiny and ever-decreasing part of the population. Therefore, the commercial, managerial, governmental, intellectual and professional functions that were once carried out by a large number of property owners have now been delegated to an upper stratum of employees. Hence, as the number of owners is continually diminished, the number of management employees increases; as the number of "independent" doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers diminishes, the number of employees in these professions increases.
This upper stratum of employees still shares similar tasks and a similar class outlook, to a certain extent, with its independent predecessors and its contemporary employers.* On the other hand, this upper stratum of employees shares with the proletariat the characteristic of being a dispossessed class that owns no means of production and is compelled to sell its labor power to the capitalists in order to live.
* The exploiting classes have always maintained a special cadre of military officers, government administrators, intellectuals, clerics, etc. who were drawn not only from the exploiting classes but from other classes as well, and who carried out functions similar to the modern-day petty bourgeois employees. The point is that these strata have been enlarged as capitalism has developed and, in terms of personnel, have become increasingly distinct from the shrinking number of property owners (while at the same time their work is ever more subordinated to the interests of the ruling class).
Economically, the petty bourgeois employees are also in an intermediate position between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, with the income of the divergent strata overlapping that of both classes. Upper level petty bourgeois employees, such as a well-paid management official or engineer in a large corporation, may often earn more than the capitalist owner of a small company. At the same time the lower level petty bourgeois employees may earn little more than common proletarians and less than the labor aristocracy......
Managers, Administrators, Supervisors and Sales Representatives. Karl Marx described the function of the hired manager under the capitalist mode of production as follows:
"The work of directing, superintending and adjusting becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment that labour under the control of capital, becomes cooperative. Once a function of capital, it acquires special characteristics. The directing motive, the end aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labour-power to the greatest possible extent. As the number of cooperating labourers increases so too does their resistance to the domination of capital, and with it, the necessity for capital to overcome this resistance by counter-pressure. The control exercized by the capitalist is not only a special function, due to the nature of the social labour-process, and peculiar to that process, but it is, at the same time, the function of the exploitation of a social labour-process, and is consequently rooted in the unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the living and labouring raw material he exploits....
Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labour so soon as his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist production, as such, begins, so now, he hands over the work of direct and constant supervision of individual workmen, and groups of workmen, to a special kind of wage-labourer. An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers), and sergeants (foremen, overlookers) , who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of supervision becomes their established and exclusive function."27 (http://www.mltranslations.org/US/Rpo/classes/classes3.htm#27.)
In a large capitalist corporation the number of these bourgeois deputies multiplies, and in the largest monopoly corporations they number in the thousands. At the top of the managerial hierarchy are the capitalists themselves, surrounded by their closest lieutenants, who also must be considered part of the capitalist class. These top managers are backed up by an army of subordinates, petty bourgeois managers and administrators who are very well paid.....
...At the lowest level, many managers, foremen and supervisors make little more than the workers they supervise, and frequently less than workers in other industries..... ...Low wages, however, do not change the fundamental class character of the supervisor as the agent of the capitalist, whose function is to extract the greatest amount of surplus value possible from the workers, a position which is completely alien and hostile to that of the proletariat......
....Those directly charged with supervising workers are mainly drawn from the working class – from among the most politically backward workers who identify most closely with the capitalist and who will gladly step on their class brothers and sisters to get ahead.
Government administrators share the basic characteristics of the administrators of private industry, the difference being that, ideally, they do not command in the name of an individual capitalist, but rather in the name of the capitalist class as a whole, or the ruling sector of it.
Sales representatives also carry out the capitalists' responsibility (marketing) and identify with the capitalist. The upper section of the sales representatives are well compensated....However, even the lowest-paid corporate salesmen, real estate agents or insurance brokers are imbued with the capitalist philosophy and the hope of "making it big".....
Professional and Technical Workers (The Intelligentsia). This is the largest sector of the petty bourgeois employees, numbering nearly 15,000,000. Lenin outlined the position of this sector as follows:
"In all spheres of the people's labour, capitalism increases the number of office and professional workers with particular rapidity and makes a growing demand for intellectuals. The latter occupy a special position among the other classes, attaching themselves to the bourgeoisie by their connections, their outlooks, etc. and partly to the wage workers as capitalism increasingly deprives the intellectual of his independent position, converts him into a hired worker and threatens to lower his living standard. The transitory, unstable, contradictory position of this stratum of society now under discussion is reflected in the particularly widespread diffusion in its midst of hybrid eclectic views, a farrago of contrasting principles and ideas, an urge to rise verbally to the higher spheres and to conceal the conflicts between the historical groups of the population with phrases...."
....The bourgeoisie relies on the support of an array of intellectuals who serve as highly placed scientists, engineers, political advisers, military experts, economists, lawyers, propagandists, etc. This intellectual elite is extremely highly paid and is completely integrated into the top levels of the bourgeois power structure in both industry and the state. Their political stand is identical with that of the monopoly bourgeoisie.
In addition there is a much larger sector of highly paid professionals who staff the capitalist technical apparatus and are a strong base of support for the bourgeoisie. This upper sector of professionals includes most lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, college professors, computer specialists, etc.....Their high salaries, along with their privileged conditions of work and their elite status, separate them from the masses of people and identify them with the bourgeoisie... Many of the upper-level professionals supervise the work of subordinate technical workers and actually do very little work themselves (i.e. doctors supervise nurses, engineers supervise technicians and drafters, college professors supervise teaching and research assistants, etc.), which contributes further to their world outlook as masters rather than workers.........
....A number of these higher-level professions are directly concerned with the management of capitalist enterprises (operations and systems analysts, personnel and labor relations experts and accountants) and have all of the reactionary characteristics that this entails. Lawyers are the agents of the bourgeois legal system and most of them serve, either directly or indirectly, the repressive state apparatus or the capitalist corporations.
The upper-level professionals are a closed and self-perpetuating stratum, composed predominantly of Anglo-American men who are themselves children of upper-level professionals. Systematic discrimination and carefully constructed educational and professional barriers maintain this elite status.
The majority of professional and technical workers, however, do not belong to this upper stratum. Nurses, school teachers, social workers, technical workers, etc. do not enjoy the high salaries or the social status accorded the top professions. This group, for the most part, stands above the proletariat, enjoying somewhat better wages and conditions of work. These petty privileges are, once again, maintained through a system of educational barriers, but these barriers are not so extensive as those connected with the upper-level professions, and a large number of these workers are drawn from the ranks of the proletariat. Those allowed into the lower-level professional and technical positions are predominantly, but not exclusively, Anglo-Americans. Among the lower-level professions are those that have been traditionally set aside for women (nurses, school teachers, librarians, social workers, etc.). Women are still largely barred from scientific and engineering work....
....The extent to which the capitalist has placed the lower categories of the intelligentsia into a position similar to the proletariat is demonstrated by the increasing number that are paid by the hour (rather than salaries), which is the typical method of purchasing proletarian labor power....
....As we have discussed earlier, within technical work a lower-level stratum is being created which is distinctly proletarian. Today most technical work is still carried out by employees who, to one degree or another, still enjoy petty bourgeois status, but this reality is changing....
......As the small proprietors have been steadily eliminated, another intermediate stratum has been created and has grown alongside the proletariat – the petty bourgeois employees. The wage-earning petty bourgeoisie is comprised of management and supervisory personnel, sales representatives, professional and upper-level technical workers and military and police officers. These strata make up an intermediate group between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, sharing characteristics with both.
They share with the bourgeoisie a separation from manual labor, which has been delegated almost exclusively to the proletariat. Their work, in general, falls in the categories of mental labor that in the past, before the colossal concentration of production that characterizes developed capitalism, were the realm of the wealthy classes that owned property. Today the ownership of productive property has been limited to a tiny and ever-decreasing part of the population. Therefore, the commercial, managerial, governmental, intellectual and professional functions that were once carried out by a large number of property owners have now been delegated to an upper stratum of employees. Hence, as the number of owners is continually diminished, the number of management employees increases; as the number of "independent" doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers diminishes, the number of employees in these professions increases.
This upper stratum of employees still shares similar tasks and a similar class outlook, to a certain extent, with its independent predecessors and its contemporary employers.* On the other hand, this upper stratum of employees shares with the proletariat the characteristic of being a dispossessed class that owns no means of production and is compelled to sell its labor power to the capitalists in order to live.
* The exploiting classes have always maintained a special cadre of military officers, government administrators, intellectuals, clerics, etc. who were drawn not only from the exploiting classes but from other classes as well, and who carried out functions similar to the modern-day petty bourgeois employees. The point is that these strata have been enlarged as capitalism has developed and, in terms of personnel, have become increasingly distinct from the shrinking number of property owners (while at the same time their work is ever more subordinated to the interests of the ruling class).
Economically, the petty bourgeois employees are also in an intermediate position between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, with the income of the divergent strata overlapping that of both classes. Upper level petty bourgeois employees, such as a well-paid management official or engineer in a large corporation, may often earn more than the capitalist owner of a small company. At the same time the lower level petty bourgeois employees may earn little more than common proletarians and less than the labor aristocracy......
Managers, Administrators, Supervisors and Sales Representatives. Karl Marx described the function of the hired manager under the capitalist mode of production as follows:
"The work of directing, superintending and adjusting becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment that labour under the control of capital, becomes cooperative. Once a function of capital, it acquires special characteristics. The directing motive, the end aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labour-power to the greatest possible extent. As the number of cooperating labourers increases so too does their resistance to the domination of capital, and with it, the necessity for capital to overcome this resistance by counter-pressure. The control exercized by the capitalist is not only a special function, due to the nature of the social labour-process, and peculiar to that process, but it is, at the same time, the function of the exploitation of a social labour-process, and is consequently rooted in the unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the living and labouring raw material he exploits....
Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labour so soon as his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist production, as such, begins, so now, he hands over the work of direct and constant supervision of individual workmen, and groups of workmen, to a special kind of wage-labourer. An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers), and sergeants (foremen, overlookers) , who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of supervision becomes their established and exclusive function."27 (http://www.mltranslations.org/US/Rpo/classes/classes3.htm#27.)
In a large capitalist corporation the number of these bourgeois deputies multiplies, and in the largest monopoly corporations they number in the thousands. At the top of the managerial hierarchy are the capitalists themselves, surrounded by their closest lieutenants, who also must be considered part of the capitalist class. These top managers are backed up by an army of subordinates, petty bourgeois managers and administrators who are very well paid.....
...At the lowest level, many managers, foremen and supervisors make little more than the workers they supervise, and frequently less than workers in other industries..... ...Low wages, however, do not change the fundamental class character of the supervisor as the agent of the capitalist, whose function is to extract the greatest amount of surplus value possible from the workers, a position which is completely alien and hostile to that of the proletariat......
....Those directly charged with supervising workers are mainly drawn from the working class – from among the most politically backward workers who identify most closely with the capitalist and who will gladly step on their class brothers and sisters to get ahead.
Government administrators share the basic characteristics of the administrators of private industry, the difference being that, ideally, they do not command in the name of an individual capitalist, but rather in the name of the capitalist class as a whole, or the ruling sector of it.
Sales representatives also carry out the capitalists' responsibility (marketing) and identify with the capitalist. The upper section of the sales representatives are well compensated....However, even the lowest-paid corporate salesmen, real estate agents or insurance brokers are imbued with the capitalist philosophy and the hope of "making it big".....
Professional and Technical Workers (The Intelligentsia). This is the largest sector of the petty bourgeois employees, numbering nearly 15,000,000. Lenin outlined the position of this sector as follows:
"In all spheres of the people's labour, capitalism increases the number of office and professional workers with particular rapidity and makes a growing demand for intellectuals. The latter occupy a special position among the other classes, attaching themselves to the bourgeoisie by their connections, their outlooks, etc. and partly to the wage workers as capitalism increasingly deprives the intellectual of his independent position, converts him into a hired worker and threatens to lower his living standard. The transitory, unstable, contradictory position of this stratum of society now under discussion is reflected in the particularly widespread diffusion in its midst of hybrid eclectic views, a farrago of contrasting principles and ideas, an urge to rise verbally to the higher spheres and to conceal the conflicts between the historical groups of the population with phrases...."
....The bourgeoisie relies on the support of an array of intellectuals who serve as highly placed scientists, engineers, political advisers, military experts, economists, lawyers, propagandists, etc. This intellectual elite is extremely highly paid and is completely integrated into the top levels of the bourgeois power structure in both industry and the state. Their political stand is identical with that of the monopoly bourgeoisie.
In addition there is a much larger sector of highly paid professionals who staff the capitalist technical apparatus and are a strong base of support for the bourgeoisie. This upper sector of professionals includes most lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, college professors, computer specialists, etc.....Their high salaries, along with their privileged conditions of work and their elite status, separate them from the masses of people and identify them with the bourgeoisie... Many of the upper-level professionals supervise the work of subordinate technical workers and actually do very little work themselves (i.e. doctors supervise nurses, engineers supervise technicians and drafters, college professors supervise teaching and research assistants, etc.), which contributes further to their world outlook as masters rather than workers.........
....A number of these higher-level professions are directly concerned with the management of capitalist enterprises (operations and systems analysts, personnel and labor relations experts and accountants) and have all of the reactionary characteristics that this entails. Lawyers are the agents of the bourgeois legal system and most of them serve, either directly or indirectly, the repressive state apparatus or the capitalist corporations.
The upper-level professionals are a closed and self-perpetuating stratum, composed predominantly of Anglo-American men who are themselves children of upper-level professionals. Systematic discrimination and carefully constructed educational and professional barriers maintain this elite status.
The majority of professional and technical workers, however, do not belong to this upper stratum. Nurses, school teachers, social workers, technical workers, etc. do not enjoy the high salaries or the social status accorded the top professions. This group, for the most part, stands above the proletariat, enjoying somewhat better wages and conditions of work. These petty privileges are, once again, maintained through a system of educational barriers, but these barriers are not so extensive as those connected with the upper-level professions, and a large number of these workers are drawn from the ranks of the proletariat. Those allowed into the lower-level professional and technical positions are predominantly, but not exclusively, Anglo-Americans. Among the lower-level professions are those that have been traditionally set aside for women (nurses, school teachers, librarians, social workers, etc.). Women are still largely barred from scientific and engineering work....
....The extent to which the capitalist has placed the lower categories of the intelligentsia into a position similar to the proletariat is demonstrated by the increasing number that are paid by the hour (rather than salaries), which is the typical method of purchasing proletarian labor power....
....As we have discussed earlier, within technical work a lower-level stratum is being created which is distinctly proletarian. Today most technical work is still carried out by employees who, to one degree or another, still enjoy petty bourgeois status, but this reality is changing....