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this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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From the original definition of the PMC in an article where the term and acronym was first coined:
The article would go on to list a hodgepodge of jobs ranging from classic labor aristocrat jobs like engineers to middle management types who don't actually own the means of production (I'm guess this is what you're alluding to in your comment) to "workers concerned with the production of ideology" like teachers, social workers, psychologists, and entertainers. This is why I despise the term PMC. It's a trash term that absolutely no one uses in its original definition, which honestly already kinda sucks. In practice, people use it to mean some kind of labor aristocrat working in a white collar job like a software dev or HR manager even when not every labor aristocrat works a blue color job and not every white collar worker is a labor aristocrat.
Notice the hyphen in "professional-managerial" that people today omit. It's very intentional by the original authors. They don't mean managers who work in a professional settings constituting its own class, but professionals and managers together constituting its own class. So, the PMC (professional-managerial class) is simply PC (professional class) + MC (managerial class). They have a table which lists the numbers of certain sectors of the PMC, the sectors being
engineers
manufacturing managers
social, recreation, and religious workers (other than clergy)
college faculty
accountants and auditors
government officials and administrators
editors and reporters
It's basically laborers who do intellectual, administrative, and supervisory work. Like, arguably every single white collar worker would count as a PMC, which the article seems to be pushing although I haven't gone through the whole thing.
Yeaa stepping out of this because even the original term has never been defined well
The idea to include professionals that necessitate the reproduction of capitalist culture and relations is good but a lot of the roles they include are kinda weird and don't fit imo like nurses
Should scientists be a part of this? Or is it just academics?
Ugh, for real. Case in point, how Zizek uses it here.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231203014629/http://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n02/slavoj-zizek/the-revolt-of-the-salaried-bourgeoisie