this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Class isn't "power hierarchy" in Marxist analysis, though. That's an Anarchist interpretation, one I won't say you can't hold personally as valid, but that's not the Marxist critique. Engels and Lenin specifically called managers Labor aristocracy as they are necessary aspects of large industry, and not a class in themselves. Class instead is a social relation to ownership of the Means of Production.
In the "Administration of Things," as Engels puts it, there are to be administrators, and production along a common plan. It's through this that large industry under Capitalism paves the way for the transition to Socialism, and then Communism, socialized production requires an informed plan.
And the managerial class doesn't have that? Is it easier or harder for an MBA to get a loan to become a millionaire than it is for a worker coop? To furnish golden parachutes for themselves while leaving workers with not even the dole (heard of some nasty practices in the US, there, making people 'quit without cause' by bullying etc which would disqualify them from welfare).
Is an Engineer a class? They make better money than assembly workers. The answer is no, Engineers are a substratum of the Proletariat, worthy of their own analysis, but not as distinct from the rest of the Proletariat. That's why Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc all viewed managers as proletarian, doing a separate kind of labor, and even distinct living conditions on average, but retaining the same labor relations to the Means of Production.
So you're saying that there's no difference in things like capital access. "Same relations" implying "no difference, nada, zilch". I don't find that assessment compatible with the material conditions we live under.
One proletarian has the strength of two average proletarians. Does he constitute his own distinct class, as he can leverage that for somewhat higher pay, and therefore eventually become petty bourgeois? No. Again, we can see specialized labor as a substratum, but to confuse it for a class in and of itself goes against the Marxist conception of class.
Now, if you define class as relations of hierarchy, there's no dissonance, and we can consider managers their own class. But at that point, we have to be careful not to trip over each other's understanding of class when discussing Marxism vs Anarchism.
That's a relationship to a crate or to barbells, not to capital or the means of production.
I already explained how this can cascade into a different relationship at a rate more advantageous than the average proletarian, as you already saw fit to distinguish classes.