To me they're like mere servants of the State, like Lenin talked about in "2. What is to Replace the Smashed State Machine?" in his writing "The State and Revolution"
Under Capitalism, they are its privileged knights that try to deflect and control, if not defend directly its image as "the only option", who have their incentive in doing so, with their class status stake being in their duty to shepherd the means of production and its resulting benefits
However, they don't own the means of production, as they merely manage it for the landholding, industrialist, and financier capitalists
On the other hand, under Socialism, while its privileges will be probably be done away, the PM class on its own would innovated upon, for their new duty of overseeing, managing, and reporting the collectivized cooperatives and state-owned enterprises..
Until the final stage of Communism arrives, I think they're pretty handy
I say this, because I hear such disgusted sentiment in Hexbear against them
Is the PMC an actual class? Anarchists think so. Some labor organizers think so (especially those with anarchist tendencies). But the PMC are non-owners. They are more akin to petite bourgeoisie, but with even less reason to be reactionary.
Under socialism, I would like to see the responsibility of oversight and reporting to be through elected representative managers, not overseers - elected by the workers from among their peers, based on those who show the greatest potential for reducing the chaos of work through empathy forged in lived experience.
The PMC has changed over the last century, and it has many segments. Many who would be considered a sort of the PMC are actually intellectual workers solving abstract problems and then trying to implement those solutions in real conditions. I don't know that it makes sense to treat it as a real class.
Who even came up with the term "professional managerial class" anyway? Like are we not allowed to have professionals managers under socialism?
Lenin and Engels used the term labor aristocracy, which is much clearer and to the point anyway.
It's definitely used by anarchists to build a false equivalency between socialism and capitalism because they both have managers who tell you what to do.
Nearly anyone not involved in manufacturing or extraction in the imperial core are part of the labor aristocracy - marketers, influencers, actors, writers, etc.
Under socialism, I would like to see the responsibility of oversight and reporting to be through elected representative managers, not overseers - elected by the workers from among their peers, based on those who show the greatest potential for reducing the chaos of work through empathy forged in lived experience.
Hm, you've seem to have done more homework on that work of Lenin I mentioned than me, congrats...
I'll keep that in mind...
They are more akin to petite bourgeoisie
And yet so long as they aren't petty proprietors themselves their relationship to production is proletarian, just as it would be if they were a doctor or an engineer.
There's an argument that the PMC doesn't use the means of production and are therefore distinct from the proletariat like the lumpenproletariat are.
You can look to the history of previous successful socialist transitions to see how many of the mandarins of the capitalist class were repurposed under socialism. What else would you do with them, and how would things continue to work if you didn’t make use of their relatively unique working knowledge of things?
The PMC is usually considered a much larger group than just the “managers”: it includes the “professionals.” College professors, scientists, engineers, journalists, etc.
Edit to add: It’s not as if these people would have alternatives to socialism after private property is abolished, other than emigration.
Funnily enough the two most proactively agitative people outside of my politically active close friends have been two of my current and previous direct managers
Both are libs with some socdem tendencies, but they also are smart people working as the interface between money and labor. It's hard not to develop at least some kind of class consciousness when you are the person telling people that someone else fired them
Granted, their criticisms are often pretty surface level, but honestly the last time I talked with my current manager face to face it felt like they were inches away from calling for a strike (we are firing 80+ people at our location because the line went up slightly less than last year)
My old manager thaught me how to take advantage of the corporation and the bureaucracy for my and the customer's benefit, and didn't hesitate to explain in detail the many ways the company and the government was fucking up and fucking people over
PMC's are labor aristocracy with usually at least some passive capital from shares or investments, but especially with raises being tied to managerial positions at certain levels depending on the industry (and let's be honest, it's always better to be managed by someone with actual experience), I wouldn't determine class positions from the hierarchy of the system
Related !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml thread: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3187131
I say this, because I hear such disgusted sentiment in Hexbear against them
There's a strain of thought that basically goes, "If one subset of a group gets more crumbs, then they are more likely to side with the givers of the crumbs instead of siding with those who get fewer crumbs." Which... leads to turning the concept of "petite bourgeois" and "professional managerial class" into a meme (strawman?, mememan?) and then shittalking that instead of a more honest and serious analysis.
PMC has a very ''I'm powerless, I was only following orders'' vibe to it
But that exists in any system ngl
The PMC is not a real class as it does not describe the employee relationship to labour and the means of production. The way PMC is talked about online is more like an RPG class in a game than an economic or industrial term. If you have the look of an office worker, if you wear a business shirt, if you don't have calluses, then you are a PMC. Does that sound like a reasonable category to hold?
Here's a good video about it: https://youtu.be/y0KHMHngotM?si=qbUjwXwjsToXQsKx
On second thoughts, I may have to reconsider if there is such thing about a PMC....
Even under socialism, planning will be done collectively, and the role of the manager will be obsolete.
Let me explain.
In Capitalism, the manager will be developing workflow, task priorities, and internal marketing nudges. Their compensation is directly proportional to the performance of their team, based on how well they meet/exceed benchmarks/quotas.
In socialism, there will be central planning. Ownership is collective, meaning the team will directly have a stake in the success of the project/task. Their own compensation (monetary or otherwise) is directly related to the performance of themselves and their peers. So, how a team will organize their workflow, manage priorities, etc, will be up to the team.
The result is that they will outperform any capitalist manager, because not only do they have a personal stake in meeting the benchmarks/quotas, but they also have the most experience in performing the task. There will be advisors to give them tools and techniques, meaning the team will get management training.
It's not clear to me why management would become obsolete. Good management (the coordination of people, resources, and timelines) requires skill and is a science, and the efficiency we get from division of labour/specialization suggests workplaces would be better off if some workers specialized in management roles.
See, for example, Krupskaya:
We, Russians, have hitherto shown little sophistication in this science of management. However, without studying it, without learning to manage, we will not only not make it to communism, but not even to socialism.
https://redsails.org/the-taylor-system/
You’re talking about project management, (the coordination of people resources and timelines) which is only one of the aspects of management, and is useful for larger projects that you’re only going to build once, like infrastructure or larger experiments.
For these, you would need a coordinator that gathers and prioritizes info, like a planner or project coordinator.
There’s two other components. One of which is workflow optimization, which is for repetitive tasks like manufacturing or information processing. And the other is keeping up employee morale, also known as internal marketing.
For these, a manager is useless for the reasons stated above. However, the workers themselves would need to learn the relevant skills that the managers have.
The work of Taylor wasn't just for projects, but its focus was on measuring activities done in production. You can see those ideas being developed later on with Fordism and further in Toyotism, each with their own breakthroughs.
I think scientific management will develop further in communist societies, since labor need to be organized. One of many contributions of capitalism when compared to feudalism was specialization and then breakdown of very complex processes in smaller simpler tasks. However, in communism, the tendency is that the technical aspects of production will remain while the socio-economic relations will change, since there will not be exploiter and exploitable classes anymore.
Well, there’s a lot more people than Taylor. But it all circulates around the idea of standardized work, which applies to second item that I mentioned; workflow optimization.
Workflow optimization and employee morale will still be important under socialism.
Workflow optimization is just management of people/resources/timelines (and is present in non-repetitive jobs too): what processes aren't working well together, what were the root causes of issues we encountered, how do we fix these problems? This, too, gets better with experience and study and some workers should specialize in this sort of management.
Employee morale (and other aspects of emotional work) will also still be a relevant question under socialism: how do you balance a specific worker's development interests with the needs of the job, how do you manage interpersonal conflict, how do you build consensus for or mediate disagreement raising from decisions the group needs to make? Straight-up boring old motivation questions also do not disappear just because workers have a stake in the fruits of their labour.
And I’m not suggesting that it will disappear, only that it will by done by the team itself, not by a manager who only has a stake in the performance of the team.
If you have a conflict between your DND game and a commitment to your family, you don’t need a manager to help you resolve it. Similarly, if your raid group is optimizing runs for your MMORPG, you don’t hire a manager.
Even if you’re a manager for your team, most of what you do is gather data and feedback from your team and observe their workflow, and then pass that information back to them. That’s inefficiency in movement of information right there.
I think you are very narrowly defining manager as a manager of capital (i.e., seeking to maximize profits without care for what products are being made). I think you should read this: https://redsails.org/the-relationships-between-capitalists/
As Marx later emphasizes, one consequence of the development of management as a distinct category of labor is that the profits still received by owners can no longer be justified as the compensation for organizing the production process. But what about the managers themselves, how should we think about them? Are they really laborers, or capitalists? Well, both — their position is ambiguous. On the one hand, they are performing a social coordination function, that any extended division of labor will require. But on the other hand, they are the representatives of the capitalist class in the coercive, adversarial labor process that is specific to capitalism.
It is only the last part — the coercive, adversarial role played as representatives of capital — that will become obsolete. The coordination part of management (which includes coaching and motivation and conflict resolution) will remain.
My experience with organizations, from families to RPG groups to community associations to capitalist enterprises, is that in a management void, some people will take on management responsibilities. Since these roles require skill and entail responsibility for certain tasks, it's better to formalize it and train people for it. Do you not also see this in the organizations you are part of? Or could you be underestimating the amount of labour others are putting in to managing your community?
Since these roles require skill and entail responsibility for certain tasks, it’s better to formalize it and train people for it.
I agree with this. But it’s everyone that’s being trained in the process, not just a select few managers. This is not just my idea, but rather the current dogma.
While there is one person that is the most outspoken about management, in reality, everyone needs to participate in the process. And to participate effectively, they need to be trained.
Of course, we should increase education for everyone. It enables better workplace democracy and efficiency. But as per the article I linked in my last comment, specialization and division of labour (required for efficient production) means some workers will also specialize in management, i.e., become managers.
I'm curious what "current dogma" you're thinking about that says managers will become obsolete.
Organizing a small games group has no parrell to the real life beurcacy that is required to run state institutions, and to train and manage large work forces like factories.
Honestly the simplest way I think about it is that we'd remove the heirarchy; You would still have managers, but they would be paid the same as workers and are democratically put in place by the workers under them. Its a recongition that it is work, its just different work, but work all the same. Different skills, same status.
Having done both, there’s a lot more parallels than you think.
Removing the hierarchy would work. Managers would be an advisory position.
