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The proletarianization of tech workers
(doctorow.medium.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Ah yes, just what the working class desperately needs, a gatekeeper.
I am not a gate keeper. I work in an unionized company in fintech. But I also recognize that calling me "proletarian" is detrimental for battles of real proletariat. Because I have a better salary than a medical doctor with a 5th of the stress. And I don't make near google salary. I have former colleagues who went to google... They are not absolutely struggling. They need to unionize? Surely. But let's keep it real, use words properly, because there are people in the current economy who are struggling. Proletariat means that the only "capital" owned by someone is their children. It evolved to mean working class, where only capital is ability to do a work.
Google engineers have real capital invested in stock market and pension funds, a great salary and benefits, transferable skills, and their biggest asset is their knowledge. They need to unionize only to fight back to mass lay offs, and have more saying on the company direction. Other than that they are doing pretty fine.
I work in tech, not Google but I am compensated similarly. The reason you are getting my downvotes is because you're missing the point. We worked our asses off to get where we are only to say we're "not struggling" anymore and have early retirement plans in place because we were thoughtful in our career choices and personal budget. That's a lot different from someone who had a retirement plan set from birth or doesn't need to work for a living.
Ultimately as long as tech workers continue to sell their labor then they are working class.
Than read again my comment. You are not proletariat. I am not proletariat. A manager at your bank is not proletariat. A doctor is not proletariat. We face issues of life, but we are absolutely privileged compared to proletariat
I grew up in one of the poorest region of Europe. To study I had to live in 2 of the worst ghettos of UK. There you see proletariat.
Anyone who call google engineers proletariat is as out of touch as a wall street ceo.
And I am surprised how lemmy can be this out of touch with the real word
Stop using the word "proletariat" when you clearly do not understand what it means and clearly have not read any of the theory from which the word was popularized
"Proletariat" != "impoverished"
I grew up reading gramsci... You are here claiming that modern version of petite bourgeois are proletariat. We need the "we are not the same" meme.
If you insist on using Marxist terminology, it would greatly benefit you to read some actual Marxist theory. I'm not saying that Gramsci wasn't a Marxist either. He was. You clearly don't understand these terms, however.
To be honest I am relieved to not have your approval on this. You all guys are so completely out of your mind, that agreeing with you would mean something is really wrong with me.
I'll ask my google friends, now that they have suddenly become proletariat, to stop by their proletarian loft by the lake with no offspring whatsoever to arrange seizing the means of production. We'll arrange it between their trip in costa Rica and their Kenyan safari. We wait for their tesla to fully recharge though.
They should first reinvest all their google stocks, as market do not value proletarian revolution, and the stock price might get an hit.
I heard fake communists were a bit crazy around here. But this whole thread is another level crazy
Hey I got a temp ban for my post and username (typical lemmy homophobia) but I wanted to come back and seriously recommend with nothing but civility that you engage with some of the ideas of people who’ve pushed back against you in this comment thread.
When everyone from conservatives to communists are frothing at the mouth it doesn’t mean you’re doing something right, it doesn’t mean the answer is somewhere in the middle and you found it, it means you overlooked a lot of ideas.
For my part, your claim that tech workers aren’t proletarian is absurd on the face of it because that claim denies the nature of tech work and proletarianization. An alarmingly small number of tech workers hail from the places they’re working in, almost all have moved there for the work. Unless everyone moved away from their families and homes because they just love the idea, they were pushed to move by the lack of work. And while you’re happy to put senior engineers in the tech worker category, call center tech support is notably absent in your analysis. Heck, entry level programmers are absent!
Your claims can only be put together as some form of gatekeeping based on aesthetics: they don’t look poor to you so they can’t be proletarian.
If I’m off base I look forward to your response!
The difference between the people you call proletariat and the people you refuse to call proletariat is often luck. Luck is fickle and can swing both ways. A manager at a bank is absolutely proletariat, they've just been given a bit more money and told they're no longer proletariat. This is because it's way easier to keep workers and management at each other's throats than to have everyone target the real source of the "orders from above".
Obviously not everyone has the same situation and some people are more privileged than others. But there is a huge difference between someone who has to work everyday VS someone who doesn't. That doctor has to go to work, same as the programmer, or the manager. They all have unique lifestyles but they are all workers. They are the proletariat