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/176/ The Worst Class ft. Catherine Liu
🕑 Added 2021-02-16 07:01:00 +0000 UTCOn the Professional-Managerial Class.
Catherine Liu joins us to talk about the worst class in history (the PMC), and how and why they hoard all forms of secularised value. We discuss the development of the PMC as a class, figure out when it stopped being "heroic", and debate who the PMC'S leader might be.
We conclude by asking whether the Left needs the PMC (or vice versa?).
The discussion will continue next week – focusing on recent unionising in professional workplaces, how the PMC brings up its children, and whether the "culture industry" is still a thing – in a subscriber-only episode on our patreon.
Readings:
- Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional-Managerial Class, Catherine Liu, University of Minnesota Press, 2021
- Moral Minoritarianism from the Ashes of Left Populism, George Hoare, Damage
- Saving Britain's Universities report, Lee Jones & Phillip Cunliffe, Cieo
Comments
Sam
love that Dolly Parton plays the know-it-all PMC in Catherine’s head
Shatner's Bassoon
I'm not sure how useful this concept of the PMC is, especially when it's extended to include basically all white-collar workers. Low-level office workers are neither professional, managerial, nor even a class, strictly speaking, but rather a job category. What's wrong with the Marxist definition of class, the working class being those who have nothing to sell but their own labour power? "PMC" is a convenient shorthand for "middle class liberals who I happen to find annoying at the moment", but beyond that it seems kind of meaningless. Incidentally, is it not a case in point of Alex's idea about concepts in American political discourse being exported to other countries where they don't really make sense?
