Third, elite liberals and left liberals often miss a key point on who white (and nonwhite) working class people most directly interact when it comes to the infliction of what the sociologist Richard Sennett called “the hidden injuries of class.” It is through regular contact with the professional and managerial class, not the mostly invisible corporate and financial elite, that the working class mostly commonly experiences class inequality and oppression in America.

Working people might see hyper-opulent “rich bastards” like Trump, Bill Gates, and even Warren Buffett on television. In their real lives, they carry out “ridiculous orders” and receive “idiotic” reprimands from middle- and upper middle-class coordinators—from, to quote a white university maintenance worker I spoke with last summer, “know-it-all pencil-pushers who don’t give a flying fuck about regular working guys like me.”

This worker voted for Trump “just to piss-off all the big shot (professional class) liberals” he perceived as constantly disrespecting and pushing him around.

It is not lost on the white working class that much of this managerial and professional class “elite” tends to align with the Democratic Party and its purported liberal and multicultural, cosmopolitan, and environmentalist values. It doesn’t help that the professional and managerial “elites” are often with the politically correct multiculturalism and the environmentalism that many white workers (actually) have (unpleasant as this might be to acknowledge) some rational economic and other reasons to see as a threat to their living standards, status, and well-being.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/20/divide-and-rule-class-hate-and-the-2016-election/

The white maintenance worker is certainly going to get screwed by Trump’s corporate presidency. You can take that to the bank. He would also have gotten shafted by Hillary’s corporate presidency if she had won. You can take that down to your favorite financial institution too. And the worker’s anger at all the “big shots” with their Hillary and Obama bumper stickers on the back of their Volvos and Audis and Priuses is not based merely on some foolish and “uneducated” failure to perceive his common interests with the rest of the “99 percent” against the top hundredth.

We are the 99 Percent, except, well, we’re not. Among other things, a two-class model of America deletes the massive disparities that exist between the working-class majority of Americans and the nation’s professional and managerial class. In the U.S. as across the world capitalist system, ordinary working people suffer not just from the elite private and profit-seeking capitalist ownership of workplace and society. They also confront the stark oppression inherent in what left economists Robin Hahnel and Mike Albert call the “corporate division of labor”—an alienating, de-humanizing, and hierarchical subdivision of tasks “in which a few workers have excellent conditions and empowering circumstances, many fall well below that, and most workers have essentially no power at all.”

Over time, this pecking order hardens “into a broad and pervasive class division” whereby one class — roughly the top fifth of the workforce —“controls its own circumstances and the circumstances of others below,” while another (the working class) “obeys orders and gets what its members can eke out.” The “coordinator class,” Albert notes, “looks down on workers as instruments with which to get jobs done. It engages workers paternally, seeing them as needing guidance and oversight and as lacking the finer human qualities that justify both autonomous input and the higher incomes needed to support more expensive tastes.” That sparks no small working class resentment.

Is the article called "Its Worth Considering" or is that your added commentary?


They also confront the stark oppression inherent in what left economists Robin Hahnel and Mike Albert call the “corporate division of labor”—an alienating, de-humanizing, and hierarchical subdivision of tasks “in which a few workers have excellent conditions and empowering circumstances, many fall well below that, and most workers have essentially no power at all.”

Liberal garbage. Some worker's get "(relatively) empowering (PERSONAL) circumstances" and this denotes a separate CLASS?

Over time, this pecking order hardens “into a broad and pervasive class division” whereby one class — roughly the top fifth of the workforce —“controls its own circumstances and the circumstances of others below,” while another (the working class) “obeys orders and gets what its members can eke out.” The “coordinator class,” Albert notes, “looks down on workers as instruments with which to get jobs done. It engages workers paternally, seeing them as needing guidance and oversight and as lacking the finer human qualities that justify both autonomous input and the higher incomes needed to support more expensive tastes.” That sparks no small working class resentment.

So this guy thinks an entire class of folks just pops into being because he says "managerial class"? Hey, how about the "deep voiced" class - they really freak me out, what with their deep voices and all.

This is so far away from materialism it is staggering. Classes are groups formed from the scrape and grind of time, conditions and social production. They don't just pop up because of some managerial style...

That was my addition.

I think you missed the point or I included too much of the article which then clouded the point that it is definitely worth considering.

What is worth considering in the piece is not Street's analysis on class,or even his overall views, but the encounter he describes. The resentment and vitriol that the worker he describes harbors and who that worker focuses that resentment upon is consistent with what I am seeing. The point as to who such workers are regularly in contact with and is also relevant.

The resulting political confusion is another aspect of the piece to examine as is the allusion to the misplaced notion that there is some unified 99%.

So this guy thinks an entire class of folks just pops into being because he says "managerial class"? Hey, how about the "deep voiced" class - they really freak me out, what with their deep voices and all.

This is so far away from materialism it is staggering. Classes are groups formed from the scrape and grind of time, conditions and social production. They don't just pop up because of some managerial style...

That's all you took from this?

That's all you took from this?

Not to step in for Dhalgren, but no that isn't all.

1. On a personal note I don't think it matters but you have been alerted repeatedly to the fact that many of your sources are..shall we say, dubious. This issue comes into sharper focus when you begin to lend sources undue/unearned credence and a seal of approval/endorsement that goes beyond "here is some criticism that is out there in the wild that at least feigns being left"

2 You would like to highlight political confusion by perpetuating GROSS theoretical confusion and heavy does of eclecticism? You need a borderline intentional misrepresenter to write a long article telling you that the working class is stratified, lacks solidarity along class lines, and is in a low state of consciousness in America?

You need to introduce all of those derogatory elements to make a few simple points? I don't think so.

The guy is basically perpetuating the carry over Cold War propaganda that the intelligentsia and technicians (including administrative) are so hidebound that they will invariably orchestrate and carry out counterrevolution the moment they catch the scent of social progress (as construed by the workers) in the air. Why? Because their economic interest is separate from all other workers! That would entail a great many truths that are far more profound than anything Street is advancing.

It is exceedingly dangerous to introduce shameless muddle and blase disregard for intellectual rigor like this under the guise of "some of the things the author says correspond to how things look to me"

"Crap against the wall" works if the charge is to 'Write some stuff" but not when it is "Write some stuff that matters"

However much one might choose to retreat behind the cover of incoming and outgoing invective (think: monkeys flinging poop) the truth is that is it very important to have critics floating around to serve as a tempering conscience. That is the entire point of criticism, no? If we forsake that as an ethos, then every indulgence potentially has free rein.

That's all you took from this?


Third, elite liberals and left liberals often miss a key point on who white (and nonwhite) working class people most directly interact when it comes to the infliction of what the sociologist Richard Sennett called “the hidden injuries of class.” It is through regular contact with the professional and managerial class, not the mostly invisible corporate and financial elite, that the working class mostly commonly experiences class inequality and oppression in America.

Working people might see hyper-opulent “rich bastards” like Trump, Bill Gates, and even Warren Buffett on television. In their real lives, they carry out “ridiculous orders” and receive “idiotic” reprimands from middle- and upper middle-class coordinators—from, to quote a white university maintenance worker I spoke with last summer, “know-it-all pencil-pushers who don’t give a flying fuck about regular working guys like me.”

This worker voted for Trump “just to piss-off all the big shot (professional class) liberals” he perceived as constantly disrespecting and pushing him around.

It is not lost on the white working class that much of this managerial and professional class “elite” tends to align with the Democratic Party and its purported liberal and multicultural, cosmopolitan, and environmentalist values. It doesn’t help that the professional and managerial “elites” are often with the politically correct multiculturalism and the environmentalism that many white workers (actually) have (unpleasant as this might be to acknowledge) some rational economic and other reasons to see as a threat to their living standards, status, and well-being.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/...2016-election/

The white maintenance worker is certainly going to get screwed by Trump’s corporate presidency. You can take that to the bank. He would also have gotten shafted by Hillary’s corporate presidency if she had won. You can take that down to your favorite financial institution too. And the worker’s anger at all the “big shots” with their Hillary and Obama bumper stickers on the back of their Volvos and Audis and Priuses is not based merely on some foolish and “uneducated” failure to perceive his common interests with the rest of the “99 percent” against the top hundredth.

We are the 99 Percent, except, well, we’re not. Among other things, a two-class model of America deletes the massive disparities that exist between the working-class majority of Americans and the nation’s professional and managerial class. In the U.S. as across the world capitalist system, ordinary working people suffer not just from the elite private and profit-seeking capitalist ownership of workplace and society. They also confront the stark oppression inherent in what left economists Robin Hahnel and Mike Albert call the “corporate division of labor”—an alienating, de-humanizing, and hierarchical subdivision of tasks “in which a few workers have excellent conditions and empowering circumstances, many fall well below that, and most workers have essentially no power at all.”

Over time, this pecking order hardens “into a broad and pervasive class division” whereby one class — roughly the top fifth of the workforce —“controls its own circumstances and the circumstances of others below,” while another (the working class) “obeys orders and gets what its members can eke out.” The “coordinator class,” Albert notes, “looks down on workers as instruments with which to get jobs done. It engages workers paternally, seeing them as needing guidance and oversight and as lacking the finer human qualities that justify both autonomous input and the higher incomes needed to support more expensive tastes.” That sparks no small working class resentment.

Third, elite liberals and left liberals often miss a key point on who white (and nonwhite) working class people most directly interact when it comes to the infliction of what the sociologist Richard Sennett called “the hidden injuries of class.”

"Liberals" of any stripe most often "miss key points" regarding the working class. Since he says "white" working class and adds, parenthetically, "and non-whites", why not just say "working class"? Why the need for the differentiation and then the denial of differentiation?
It is obvious that most working class people have much more regular contact (even exclusive contact) with foremen and plant managers and shop managers than with actual the capitalists who ultimately hires them all.

I do not accept the model given in this piece. I have known university workers - maintenance, janitorial, grounds keeping, security, office workers for 35 years (been one myself) and this does not sound like any of them. Of course they resent the academics, mainly because the academics look down on non-academics, but they resent almost all bosses because they are bosses. But the resentment takes the form of ridicule and condescension on the part of the workers. I think that many workers probably voted for Trump (if they voted, at all), but they did not do it to "get back" at their bosses or the liberal assholes they work for. This, in a way, makes the workers beholden, still, to their bosses for their actions. The voting patterns of working stiffs is still dependent upon their betters - just in a reverse sort of way.

There are strata in any society, maybe especially in bourgeois society, whereby different groups are used in different ways by the ruling class. All police are working class people - and they are paid to kill other working class people. The same is true of the military. This does not make them any kind of different class, it just makes them working class being used in specific ways - as we all are. The White Army in the Russian Civil War was made up of working class and peasant soldiers - all armies are.

The designation "99%" is an attempt by liberal-minded reformers to harness the class "thing", which can no longer be denied. This made many leftists elated that the reality of class was going mainstream. It has come to mean almost nothing, because it has been cleansed of any class consciousness. It isn't "class", you see, it is just numbers. And a lot of those numbers are higher paid people who oppress the workers for the bosses! Welcome to capitalism.

Over time, this pecking order hardens “into a broad and pervasive class division” whereby one class — roughly the top fifth of the workforce —“controls its own circumstances and the circumstances of others below,” while another (the working class) “obeys orders and gets what its members can eke out.” The “coordinator class,” Albert notes, “looks down on workers as instruments with which to get jobs done. It engages workers paternally, seeing them as needing guidance and oversight and as lacking the finer human qualities that justify both autonomous input and the higher incomes needed to support more expensive tastes.” That sparks no small working class resentment

This is not materialist, at all. This isn't the way classes are formed or how they function. This Albert is trying to paint this "coordinator class" as somehow analogous to the bourgeoisie in the Middle Ages - but that doesn't wash. The foremen and managers are just hirelings being used to get work done, just like everyone else, better paid, but selling their labor, nonetheless. And in a way, it replaces the real enemy class with a faux enemy class. It's the managers not the owners!

There are those who must sell their labor in order to live and those who must purchase that labor in order to profit. There are sifting layers of strata, but only two classes.

Now if I have completely misconstrued the OP, I am ready to be corrected. I have missed points before.

Thanks for the clarification Kid- I'll make sure before citing any further pieces I vet all sources through you.

For all your "smarts" Kid you are particularly estranged from reality.

You missed the point entirely- and twice. That tells me you are not interested in considering it- so don't.

Thanks for the clarification Kid- I'll make sure before citing any further pieces I vet all sources through you.

For all your "smarts" Kid you are particularly estranged from reality.

You missed the point entirely- and twice. That tells me you are not interested in considering it- so don't.

You already know my thoughts in general and you already know that I am disinclined to rehash old disputes absent an opportunity to lend CLARITY to the matter

Beyond that, all I can say is -- you asked.


You missed the point entirely- and twice.

What point? That after years of trying to generate a coherent left perspective of our own we're STILL resorting to the ad hoc and opportunistic "insights" of the likes of a guy whose shit-to-shinola rating is higher than my HDL cholesterol ratio? That we're trying to fashion some kind of motley weave from scraps tossed out by these tired jokers? Maybe we can use the weave to crown Trump's head.

If we're going to disregard and/or abandon so much at the drop of a hat (worn to cover the laughably hideous weave no doubt), what will we do when the other shoe drops?

Or was the point yet another righteous spleen vent against idiot liberals? Because I consider that to be must miss programming. I'll skip it and catch a movie.

There has been an ongoing, heated discussion on twitter between @Philgreaves and @RedKahina about the current conditions of the proletariat in particular and the working class in general vis a vis the ruling class; how to organize, what comes first, next or I don't know what all - it is pretty heated. But RedKahina tweeted the following and it seemed to fit in with this thread:



Red Kahina @RedKahina 3h3 hours ago
i'm not the field marshal, I havent the faintest idea really; but since the ruling class doesn't actually directly control

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Red Kahina ‏@RedKahina · 3h3 hours ago

any of their means of repression, or anything else, since they are a couple thousand individuals who can't even operate

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Red Kahina ‏@RedKahina · 3h3 hours ago

their own high tech refrigerators, I would think the only hope is ground up transformation of consciousness to the point

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Red Kahina ‏@RedKahina · 3h3 hours ago

where no one will serve them or so few are willing that the possibility of overpowering grows; but seems to me more likely

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She says that the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) does not have direct control over "the means of repression or anything else"! She says the ruling class is just "a couple thousand" people, who are so inept and ineffective they cannot even operate their own appliances! She says the "only hope" is "ground up transformation of consciousness" so that the workers serving these "couple thousand" people who control no "means of repression" will just quit and the "possibility of overpowering grows". I assume she means overpowering these couple of thousand, helpless, inept, bourgeoisie who have no means of defending themselves, anyway.
Red Kahina is a usually astute leftist, who has seemed to have a good grasp of Marxist ideology and a solid materialist view of reality. So when she says things like this it really makes me wonder what the hell is going on.

There is no doubt that the number of actual bourgeois ruling class members is relatively low - capitalism is constant conflict between capitalist and whenever one rises at least one falls. It is also true that the bourgeoisie hire working class class individuals of all strata to function at all levels of operations from bank managers and factory COOs to doctors, nurses, teachers, police, guards, soldiers and garbage men. But to translate that into "the ruling class have no direct control over the means of repression" is nonsensical. The standing, the wealth, and the power bestowed upon the higher underlings of the bourgeoisie ensure that the bourgeoisie have complete control over the means of repression. The very fact that the ruling class controls the livelihoods (and very lives) of every worker in the nation, and the world, means that they have control.

This idea that through working class consciousness people will come to simply stop working for the bourgeoisie and that the simple cessation of cooperation will cause the ruling class downfall strikes me as bizarre. It sort of sounds, to me like the old poster, "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came". I just don't understand this shit.

There has been an ongoing, heated discussion on twitter between @Philgreaves and @RedKahina about the current conditions of the proletariat in particular and the working class in general vis a vis the ruling class; how to organize, what comes first, next or I don't know what all - it is pretty heated. But RedKahina tweeted the following and it seemed to fit in with this thread:





She says that the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) does not have direct control over "the means of repression or anything else"! She says the ruling class is just "a couple thousand" people, who are so inept and ineffective they cannot even operate their own appliances! She says the "only hope" is "ground up transformation of consciousness" so that the workers serving these "couple thousand" people who control no "means of repression" will just quit and the "possibility of overpowering grows". I assume she means overpowering these couple of thousand, helpless, inept, bourgeoisie who have no means of defending themselves, anyway.
Red Kahina is a usually astute leftist, who has seemed to have a good grasp of Marxist ideology and a solid materialist view of reality. So when she says things like this it really makes me wonder what the hell is going on.

There is no doubt that the number of actual bourgeois ruling class members is relatively low - capitalism is constant conflict between capitalist and whenever one rises at least one falls. It is also true that the bourgeoisie hire working class class individuals of all strata to function at all levels of operations from bank managers and factory COOs to doctors, nurses, teachers, police, guards, soldiers and garbage men. But to translate that into "the ruling class have no direct control over the means of repression" is nonsensical. The standing, the wealth, and the power bestowed upon the higher underlings of the bourgeoisie ensure that the bourgeoisie have complete control over the means of repression. The very fact that the ruling class controls the livelihoods (and very lives) of every worker in the nation, and the world, means that they have control.

This idea that through working class consciousness people will come to simply stop working for the bourgeoisie and that the simple cessation of cooperation will cause the ruling class downfall strikes me as bizarre. It sort of sounds, to me like the old poster, "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came". I just don't understand this shit.

Yeah, RC usually much better than that, pretty crazy shit. If it were that easy it would have been done long ago.

Yeah, RC usually much better than that, pretty crazy shit. If it were that easy it would have been done long ago.


RC is a crude materialist it seems. She appears to ascribe no significance to SOCIAL power. How do you beat the bourgeoisie? "Starve 'em" she says.

The problem being that EVERYTHING is social. The bourgeoisie are far from all powerful, but they do wield an enormous social might (and not just militarily). In fact, explaining how this can be true is a major point of theory and why theory matters. Otherwise, you end up with exactly the same (underlying) question as RC: why does everybody just submit and cede power to the inept ineffectual bourgeoisie?

This is an example of "determination by negation". We start with something we DON'T believe and then figure out why and then work out by implication the things we are compelled to believe as a result.

PS What did Greaves say in the debate?

Despair is an easy thing to fall into these days for all but the stoutest. When it happens you should get off twitter & get drunk, tomorrow another day. Here's a bit of Greaves at the tail end(which I just caught):


You want the periphery to do your work for you? Put the whole population in gulags or sumert, they've nothing more important?

So when China liberates us in this fantasy there will be no struggle in your country, just sit back and relax?

Yes but you're not even willing to prepare for that, will they just annihilate us, or you want them to do EVERYTHING for us?



Ouch, Phil is entirely correct. RK is much better than that, we just got us a tough row to hoe, dunno how much darker it can get sans jackboots. But what choice do we have, knowing what we know, the alternatives are all dishonorable.

PS What did Greaves say in the debate?

Just to add to what BP is saying. Phil was tweeting about the down turn in numbers of proletarians in the core imperial countries. Between the transfer of manufacturing to underdeveloped, exploited countries and the automation of manufacturing in general, the number of proletarians in Britain, EU, US, etc. have dropped off and needs to be studied and analyzed. Somehow in the long, long mix of back and forth he and RK got at loggerheads over the question of unionization and Phil was advocating for the need for commies to get into the fight on whatever shop floor there was and start at the ground floor - all over again as that is the locus of the struggle. RK was trying (I think) to proffer an alternative struggle, at least I think so. Somehow this segued into this thing about there being some kind of path through abandoning the bourgeoisie to their ineptitude. Phil was pissed and wasn't trying to hide it. His ridicule of RK's thought and methodology was getting heavy.

Just to add to what BP is saying. Phil was tweeting about the down turn in numbers of proletarians in the core imperial countries. Between the transfer of manufacturing to underdeveloped, exploited countries and the automation of manufacturing in general, the number of proletarians in Britain, EU, US, etc. have dropped off and needs to be studied and analyzed. Somehow in the long, long mix of back and forth he and RK got at loggerheads over the question of unionization and Phil was advocating for the need for commies to get into the fight on whatever shop floor there was and start at the ground floor - all over again as that is the locus of the struggle. RK was trying (I think) to proffer an alternative struggle, at least I think so. Somehow this segued into this thing about there being some kind of path through abandoning the bourgeoisie to their ineptitude. Phil was pissed and wasn't trying to hide it. His ridicule of RK's thought and methodology was getting heavy.

Funny, few months ago was talking to RK about what the priorities would be if financial resources were available and her response was exactly that, building radical unions. Mine was not quite as good, re-establishing a press. Hers was the better and I knew that but was foggy about how you would do that from whole cloth.

Funny, few months ago was talking to RK about what the priorities would be if financial resources were available and her response was exactly that, building radical unions. Mine was not quite as good, re-establishing a press. Hers was the better and I knew that but was foggy about how you would do that from whole cloth.

I am not saying that I got all this clearly. But RK seemed to be saying that currently union membership was low, unions were compromised by liberal/Democrat allegiance and anti-commie ideology. I have wondered about this myself, with the nature of employment being so tenuous and temporary. Anyway, tweeter is not my forte. It is not something that I can readily embrace or utilize well. It is too brief and too truncated.

I agree about the press - that is where I would give the impetus.

I am not saying that I got all this clearly. But RK seemed to be saying that currently union membership was low, unions were compromised by liberal/Democrat allegiance and anti-commie ideology. I have wondered about this myself, with the nature of employment being so tenuous and temporary. Anyway, tweeter is not my forte. It is not something that I can readily embrace or utilize well. It is too brief and too truncated.

I agree about the press - that is where I would give the impetus.

That sounds a lot like the Trot argument, and it's wrong. Which is not to say that most of those accusations against most extant unions ain't true, but it is wrong to throw in the towel. If there is some kind of organization and solidarity that's half the battle, then it is a matter of agitation. Not gonna be easy but the more they press, and you know they will, the easier it gets.

Mebbe RK has changed her tune from our previous conversation and mebbe she got a case of the blues, if that's the case she oughta get it out of her system. A person of her stature in that community got some responsibility.

Which is not to say that unions are the whole ball of wax, we can recognize their diminished possibility without discarding them. Other sorts of organization have always been part of the mix, we may change the proportions some and that's where the press will be especially useful. But we'll not do it without strong union support.