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
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.