How the PMC Ruins Our Lives - Catherine Liu
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- Опубліковано 17 лис 2024
- On The Jacobin Show, Catherine Liu discusses how the professional-managerial class became preoccupied with their own virtue and explains why the PMC stands in the way of economic redistribution today.
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I'm a non-management pmc and I agree with all of Catherine's points. You can't fight global warming by virtue signaling the moral superiority of your Prius, or put an end to ever growing inequality with diversity training. The problems are macro, and need big infrastructure changes, not shifting responsibility for huge societal problems to the individual to solve with their solar panels and whatnot.
They really do get an ego boost from this too, in a very humble-bragging way
I am working class, I work a low wage job that is physically demanding, and so do my parents. I come from a small college town in the Midwest. I am lucky that members of the pmc in my hometown saw my natural curiosity and capacity to think critically, and kind of took me under their wing and guided me down fruitful intellectual paths which helped me understand my own situation. It’s funny, though. I have grown to absolutely despise those people, people I have known personally and been close to, but their smug self-absorption and status seeking have become so clear to me that I can no longer speak to them. The pmc will not change, they have too much to lose.
Everyone hates unnecessary middle managers. Even "Office Space" (hardly a socialist/communist propaganda piece) makes fun of this managerial class. but let's not allow our disgust for the managerial class overshadow what's being proposed here. If the "PMC" is standing in the way of "wealth redistribution".... then, with them finally removed, who handles the "wealth redistribution"? Is that some new here-to-fore unmentioned "new class" of overseers? perhaps a "party" of some kind?
@@tachiroakisu5128 Are you taking a Fukuyama stance here, to say that things are as good as they’ll get, so “shut up you whiners”? It’s a legitimate question you pose, but your tone in posing it seems to imply that you support the status quo. I think if a civilization cannot provide a meaningful and productive existence for the people it creates, such discontents have every reason to tear it all down in anger and resentment, with no obligation to build anything to replace it. After all, what have they got to lose, since their lives are shit anyway? If a socialist model or some other more equal society can be built, wonderful. If it can’t, then those who suffer life at the bottom of an unequal society have no reason not to go full nihilist.
@@baizhanghuaihai2298 no no no. Absolutely not what I'm saying. Thanks for reading and for genuinely asking what I meant here. I did a poor job of explaining. I'm simply asking this:
We all agree the PMC sucks. They represent an emergent problem in modern capitalism... this is a universal sentiment, with whole movies made about it ( "Office Space", et al). But "redistribution" is VERY nuanced. It seems great on the surface but implicit in it is that SOMEONE would need to be responsible for this manual redistribution. So then the question becomes: "who will do that?". Therein lies the rub. To surrender control of this redistribution puts us right back at square one: a centralized entity vulnerable to the very bureaucratic ineptitude we see in the current Federal budget management OR WORSE a corrupt monoparty acting in dictatorial and authoritarian ways. [Insert clichéd "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" quote here]
@@tachiroakisu5128 The easiest way to accomplish the withering away is to skip the part with the concentration of power into the hands of a central committee: but Jacobin subscribers will not be very receptive to that. Chomsky wrote an article for Jacobin about the collapse of the Soviet Union since he correctly pointed out this provided an opportunity for actual workers control, which could never coexist with the KGB. Jacobin declined to publish it. Nobody believes the Soviet Union was in workers' direct control. That is, other than credulous dupes who believe the CCP is currently socialist, in which case just convince yourself that the Republican and Democratic parties are also socialist. The billionaires funding those parties are doing so for the benefit of the working class, you're underpaid for the benefit of the working class, someone you work with is reporting on you to the management for the benefit of the working class, Friedman visited China to advise them on economic matters shortly after doing the same in Chile for the benefit of the working class, China was collaborating with the CIA in funding the mujahideen for the benefit of the working class, China collaborated with the US in funding UNITA for the benefit of the working class and China invaded Vietnam for the benefit of the working class.
Or read "The Unknown Revolution" by Voline, Santillán on the Spanish Civil War or about Shinmin in Korea. Less of a radical departure for a Marxist would be Woolf's "Democracy At Work" program, because 1. it returns the central thrust of the argument to the workplace and 2. it's very useful as propaganda when discussing with a liberal. It's fairly easy to sketch out a rhetorical point arguing that either fascism or socialism are logical consequences for different views of human nature. If humans are competent beings who can work in concert to accomplish aims and are to be trusted to make decisions about whether states should have weapons of mass destruction, trans people can use bathrooms and evolution should be taught in school, then surely they can be trusted to make decisions regarding where they spend most of their time outside of home and which they have the most training and experience in? If they're too incompetent to be trusted to make the latter decisions and require a master to make those decisions on their behalf, then why should their input be sought on nuclear weapons or environmental issues, which likely have far graver consequences?
@@baizhanghuaihai2298 What about peoples own responsibility to manage and regulate their own emotions? After all, some people in the US have completely unrealistic life expectations.
I am in love with Catherine Liu ever since listening to her talk on postmodernism. Really shaped my perspective as a working class communist and on how the radical left is viewed today.
where can i find it? thank u
Same here, she's really astute and engaging.
I'm curious in what way are you a Communist? Because there can be many interpretations.
- Personally i believe the country (and all factories/farms) should be central governed by a collective policy proposal forum (in which scientific / reason gets to rule, so no Popular Vote/Direct Democracy, no Representative Democracy, just transparent Logic).
- But there are others who just want a Social Democracy (Capitalism but with kindness/respect towards the workers).
- Others are straight Fascists (reddit is full of them) and say that Stalin was actually great, thus praising a good Dictator. (most are Russian ultra-nationalists)
- Others are just anarchists in the sense of no central Gov. at all, and that factories would work by local consensus (I don't know how.. if its by Popular Vote, or ..fantasy/magic)
- Others have no idea and don't really see Communism as a serious alternative, but they instinctively feel that's the right philosophy
- Others believe in straight Direct Democracy
etc..
I humbly suggest that we remember to not conflate charisma with scholar. I have to actively remind myself of this A LOT. I HIGHLY suggest "Modernization and Postmodernization" by Ronald Inglehart. It was lifechanging for me during undergrad...cited it all the way through postdoc.I know these days "books are for nerds and old people" and no one follows up book recommendations these days... My take away from Inglehart: "Ontogeny really *does* recapitulate phlogeny when you map out the development of nations ;-)"
@@tachiroakisu5128 dude, before recommending books for a specific reason, you'd better exemplify - bring arguments that you learned from these books (once you give a few lessons learned from the book, people would want more, and read the book).
Otherwise you might even prove that you didn't understand these books, thus cannot use them, at which point you even do a disservice to the book.
"I can't tell you anything valuable from this book, but trust me, you should read the book".
And btw, all good theories are short. The longer the text, the more confused the writer is, and the more unclear the message is.
Example: the Bible, long ass book, always needs interpretations by other scholars to make some sense out of it.
Just come across this and cannot begin to describe how much I love these 3 women and what they stand for. I really feel seen and spoken to and held to account omggg
Catherine Liu is the most based person on this planet
I’m doing a management major and it shocks me that “strategic insights” boil down to cutting costs, especially labour. Effectively, institutionalising neoliberal policies and aims within the organisation where maximising profit and continual growth is expected.
This idea has been adopted by a lot of professions inappropriately. For example mental health has also adopted a neoliberal frame of “managed care”, which basically advocates pharmaceutical drugs over other types of therapy because if expenses, which include cutting the labor force in the area when a psychiatrist drug pusher is more efficient and more profitable.
One major issue with neoliberalism as an ideology is insistence that market mechanisms always produce the best results. One of the Marxist criticisms was that rational means can produce irrational outcomes and a keystone of Marxist critique was about producing More humanistic results rather than just the logic of markets and capital.
The wholesale adoption of neoliberalism by institutions has made it so that this discussion is larger shut down, but this focus on identity politeness takes its place with out a critique of the structural problems which continue to produce poor outcomes.
So in these services you will be educated in that, but not the economic precarious issue. It results in a service provider saying I know you can’t pay your bills, you are struggling financially there is little we can do about that but I prescribe you take these drugs and I will say your preferred pronouns.
An appropriate critique of how neoliberalism distorts institutions is rarely made particularly because academia adopted the neoliberal philosophy in the USA.
I went to the international psychoanalytic university in Berlin briefly whose slogan at the moment is “Psychotherapy should be free”.
This was so satisfying to hear. I work in the belly of the beast...and have been pushed from professional/teaching roles into admin, as a matter of survival. You have put into words the pressure on us all to fall in line. Thank you ALL!
In 2017, i joined a US based small non for profit tech company. When i joined everyone had a job, the CTO was a developer at the same time. And there was nobody else between him and other developers. By the time l left last year, the developers numbers havent changed that much but we had 3 layers of management. 2 engineering managers whose job was just scheduling weekly one on one and other equally useless meetings that actuallu get in the way of productivity,... the a chief product officer whose job i still dont know, a chief technology officer who could easily do all the jobs done by the 3 above, as was the old CTO. Then they have a techinal product lead and a technical manager. Etc thats only the product team or tech if you will. Other departments i guess were exploding as well. I remember seeing two HR ladies, who resigned later on 😂
I experienced this while having a conversation with a Harvard educadet psychologist working on behalf of a pill company. She had a home in Edmonton and one in Florida made 200,000 and drove a Mercedes and said she was middle class as did one of the other middle managers she was with at this party. These people are so out of touch..." I have to go to work everyday! " Oh yeah poor you. I don't have sick days or can take time off paid to see my doctor. But yeah middle class same as the server you berated for opening a wine YOU ordered that wasn't as good as you wanted... Good god these people make me sick.
As a member of the low-wage working class who had just enough privilege & opportunities to 'make it' as a PMC had I not struggled with psych & substance issues (& lack of ambition/motivation tbh), I've always found this topic very interesting, and have harbored a certain amount of ill will for PMC types.
My parents were college-educated but were schizophrenic & couldn't hold down steady jobs. I had the home education of a more 'affluent liberal' culture, but our material conditions were such that my neighbors & friends were nearly all lower-middle class. I've always had one foot in each 'class', so felt like I didn't fully belong anywhere.
Even now, it's kind of galling to see how shows & advertisements portray a world where everyone has an office job & lives in a nice suburban house, and there are few realistic portrayals of anyone below the middle class.
I know exactly how you feel. My parents were from poor as dirt families but they made it into the pmc just barely, but they were terrible with money and went bankrupt when I was 10. All my friends were lower middle class, and even though I got a college degree I've spent most of my life in the service industry because of a mix of drugs (in the past) and the fact that my degree is in history. I can't quite claim the full precariousness of some of the working class, but I've really struggled and felt like I'm in two worlds because I have also made friends with grad students and pmc people because my dad is a professor and I know that world despite not working in it. I have a lot of difficulty not feeling really resentful toward the whole culture of the pmc.
Humans never marched a single step forward from the slavery days, our material conditions might have changed, but nothing else have.
Basically it is the capitalist false mythology and analog to the enveloping immersive propaganda of a communist utopia of a workers paradise, only it's the capitalist superclass trickle down to it's middle class semi-affluent gatekeepers and guardians PMC paradise. These "intermediaries" have the job of admiration and submission to the upper level strata and of looking down on the losers and keeping the unworthy riff raff in line and keeping them in their place as worthy of their
poverty and economic oppression, as the poor and lower order working class. Total Social Darwinian Corporate State Co-Fascism. Interestingly the process of education is a parallel hierarchical structure to the organization of business and of the social class structure and order in a generalized sense. So it is a totalizing and self reinforcing closed self contained universal system.
I come from poor village in Africa. Now in a middle class suburb with middle class job in the west. I dont definitely fit within the futility, vanity and idiosyncratic behavior of so called middle class, the bragging about vacation, the Monday talk upping each other about how many fish they caught or how their kids play soccer, the fancy lids birthday parties etc.😂
"If I get into a position of power, I can do good things. Unions can't do that." ouch
that is a painfully clear insight
Great show. Amazing. I am a psychiatric registrar and see everyday the detritus of both sides of this coin. Little girls starving themselves because of a distorted idea of perfection and cutting themselves when they can't meet it on the one hand and young men gorging themselves on drugs and violence out of sheer anomie.
Based. That odd feeling you get looking at your colleagues in STEM fields.
im part of the pmc.
time for self reflection.
great talk and thoughtful points.
thank u
How did the reflecting go?
@@greasybumpkin1661 its going great Bumpkin. what about yours?
“Transactional empathy” is the perfect description of the psychiatric industrial complex! Thanks again.
Transactional analysis therapy was attempting to do the opposite. It was attempting to create a way to interact with patients in a non-parental way, to help patients speak from their adult ego, rather than infantilize the mentally ill. The psychiatric approach is completely infantilizing as it asserts the only way you can have an adult ego is by taking these drugs. But a psychiatrist will be trained in whatever woke language of the day but that is also a scripted parenting style which does not allow the patient to discern their own needs and speak for themselves. But the reason for these trainings is said to “reduce” discrimination but it actually increases it by making generic assumptions. There can be a basic sensitivity training but then say every person is different and will have different needs and requests. What is happening instead is mass counter-transference filled with assumptions, but they generally jettisoned Freud so they don’t know the issue very well.
I am wayyy late to this conversation, but Catherine Liu is right. The concept of the PMC hoarder speaks to many issues concerning upward mobility. Or its continued diminishment. I've always referred to the concept as 'pay walling', or 'fire breaking' themselves as a method of insulation from the "commoners". There's a reason why, for one example, higher education has the separate designations of state and private. "Ivy league" schools pride themselves on educating the best and the brightest, but as the Lori Laughlin and Felicity Huffman scandals revealed, it's probably more likely that it has much more to do with access to financial resources.
Middle class professionals is all about building a floor under, not exactly smash ceilings.
Catherine liu has been the best part of the channel thank you for having her on
you have to raise little gladiator babies because we have completely given up on caring for each other and forgot the possibility of basic human/social needs like health care, child care and education for all ...
exactly
Never thought much about the difference between the P(rofessional) and the M(anagerial) parts. Makes sense to identify that split. Thanks so much for this talk, I really got a lot out of it.
I think this distinction was really good also. So much of this talk I strongly agree with, until "the pitch", which is that the PMC stand in the way of "redistribution of wealth"....on the surface it makes sense, but then you realize: "wait, then who's handles the redistribution?". "redistribution" ALWAYS implies there is a "distributor class"....which seems antithetical to the first part that I strongly agreed with: "get rid of the PMC". It's like a huge self-contradiction
@@tachiroakisu5128 the answer is, as Richard Wolff makes a big point about, once you actually have to urgently ask the question about "how to redistribute" in the first place, it implies your society is already in a profound state of crisis, and ALL bets are off. It's like asking a doctor what to do when a form of cancer otherwise amenable to treatment has metastasized. The doctor's response will be something like, "there are some possible heroic interventions and experimental treatments we can explore. But I recommend you get your affairs in order, and, if religious, consult your spiritual advisor now." You don't want inequality to metastasize precisely because the complications that arise (corruption of institutions by the rich and well connected, corrosion of public trust, deterioration of bedrock social services like public education, public health, and so on) endanger the very survival of the body politic and the continuity of even the rule of law and the protection of our most basic rights, and eventually even our physical survival in the face of crises such as we are suffering niw since the covid pandemic outbreak, crises that we clearly see require large scale, effective, coordinated collective action to tackle.
In other words, we must reject the normalization of a perpetual state of crisis. Capitalism, it is true, is routinely beset by crises. But this should tell us something about the urgent necessity of overcoming capitalism itself, not adjusting ourselves to its life threatening planetary dysfunctions.
Important point.Yes, "professional" is not all bad. It implies an allegiance to important ideals (eg, lawyers are both zealous advocates for their clients and officers of the court, sworn to uphold the rule of law, doctors are zealous advocates for the health of their patients and also swear to uphold the Hippocratic Oath, etc). Professional ethics are independent of and can override the dictatorship of capital, with its paramount imperatives of "efficiency" and "shareholder fiduciary responsibilities" (ie, maximizing profits for the ownership class).
I love this discussion. Dr Liu is very articulate. It's fascinating party because you three belong to the professional part of the PMC. Incidentally, so do I. So did Marx, Lenin, Bakunin and Einstein. But your critique does not recognize any differences in values or behavior within the class. It's directed towards the class as a whole. It seems the only way to be a good human is to leave the class.
As Dr Liu says, the message is exclusively negative. There is no value or ideas that we should be *for* in contract to the PMC values and behaviors.
I think your analysis is limited in those ways. Many of those behaviors (such as race inclusion) are rooted in humanistic, progressive values. But the mass of PMC members are resigned to class division, capitalism and ideas of competition. Their imagination is limited by their exposure and, yes, their self interest. So their empathy and actions are limited to individual actions.
I see what you are saying but aren't they implying that Victorian style pmc values cause a class split with non management. These 3 are not pmcs because not managers.
@@johnstewart7025 by their own definition, they are professionals.
Marx did not for his entire adult life tho, he never scored a professorship job, and lived poorly in a working class neighborhood off of donations and a bit of journalism until he came into his wife’s modest inheritance. That is when he moved into a middle class neighborhood, later in his life
Lenin meanwhile was a landlord, and never sold his labor the way PMC does.
C.W. Mills was the most influential book of my young life. I read it secretly as I served as an intelligence analyst from 85-89. Working closely with high-ranking military elite was a lesson in arrogance and militarism. Catherine Liu's description of the PMC managing their posture is precisely what one experiences serving in the higher centers of power.
What a great panel. Jen and Ariella are the very best. These are great women.
comrades, the PMC does not ruin our lives. We are the PMC. We on the left are all together...weird wild and rediculous. Power to the people includes all the people and if we are not ruling class, and noone in the PMC is, except in washington, then we're all one big happy family against the boss. IN a union shop, which was my last job, in a call center with air conditioning for $17.70/hour three days/week because I am an old woman, I was in constant class struggle with the two guys who were overseeing us all in the call center. We had a good deal in common, but I have always been a nonconformist and those two men clearly were willing and able to fit into the very low rung of the corporate elite...management class. HOwever, they knew and I knew that the mirage of class is just that, between the real people that we were. We were all employees of the owners of the company and they knew that as much as I did. Fortunately, covid hit and I was able to escape the call center. Vive la revolutione!!!
Yes, I have trouble with Dan evans and erenreich’s versions of how we’re all pmc and PB if we’re college educated and (even if it’s small) want our own house.
Holy fucking shit. The description about their culture is so fucking true holy shit. And it's kind of strange when you are raised by professional-managerial parents who did not come from that class. It's like sitting outside a looking glass looking in and no one understands what you mean! That was essentially how Vermont felt on a deep level.
And Vermont is insular enough that there is still a kind of naivite among that class. A real earnestness that needs to be redirected.
It is crucial to develop friendships with the homless in a non-paternalistic manner where you don't act as if they don't exsit. And engage with them on a real level. That's probably the single easiest way to shred the freudian aspects of class solidarity that are programed into you from a source of anxiety and relations with others. Isolation is a useful way to achieve this as well.
Museums ( for example the MMA in NY) are perfect places where this class dichotomy meet . You have the STAFF the curatorial administrative class and the Union the blue collar workers guards, technicians electricians , carpenters etc. who actually keep the place afloat they actually trump the Staff numbers who is also, btw overpopulated with bureaucratic bloat. Yet the Staff weld all the power.
The book is downloadable as a pdf, thank you Catherine.
The PMC are the people who perfect the idea of being "not political."
“Jacobin is a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspective…” literally the first google search 🤡
At 56 year's old divorcing woman, I wish I was smart enough to have a thinking job. I loved horticulture jobs when I was 21-35! Felt right. Got married, had our son, moved for husband's high education job. He quit job. Divorcing me. Now I work again with failing body, on my own. Living with mom. Despair
Catherine Liu is terrific
Some PMC can probably be turned on moral/ethical grounds or as their own job roles get subsumed into the precariat. From a simple materialist perspective though most - including those who may have voted or even campaigned for Bernie in the US - are hopeless cases because the things they'll get under a socialist system will be a material downgrade from the spoils they're provided under the current system - this is the kernel of the "but Americans love their private insurance!" talking point. The solidarity of universal coverage for everyone and coverage even if you're unemployed will likely not be enough to distract from M4A being marginally worse than the level of care they get from their tricked out private insurance plans via their employers.
I've worked in investment banking for decades and it continually amazes me how people think that firing only happens to others, not to them..... until it does... the precariat is only one pink slip away from all of them.
Any other related material that you can suggest? I heard Catherine Liu last night on the Toronto radio station and it quickly caught my ear. It expresses what I was unable to express about BLM and how my company is dealing with rascim.
A lot of what is said here is compelling--I agree to a lot of the points you made concerning about how the professional and managerial classes (I do see them as two different entity though) add to the inertia of the capitalist status quo--how their class formation induce a pernicious sentiment of moral and intellectual superiority, but I have two big issues with the way you present it here: 1) I am very annoyed at how you constantly externalize it, keep speaking of the PMC in the 3rd person, as if you were not part of it yourselves (and what are the boundaries of it? Do precarious academics and teachers count in it too, just because they're intellectuals?). And I believe it is important to own it while criticizing this class. 2) Much more importantly, and I believe this leads to the first problem, the presentation keeps harping on the problems of the PMC in MORAL terms, as just another CULTURE WAR issue. This does an immense disservice to a proper systemic critique of HOW this comes to be. Because WHOEVER you put in this place will tend to develop in exactly the same way, because it is after all a product of the neoliberal structure and NOT the inherent character flaws of people belonging to these classes.
Completely agree, the whole time she’s talking and about “these people” like she’s not one of them...it’s like a woke white person raging about MAGAs to show that they’re one of the good ones.
We should be looking for solidarity, not navel gazing from the middle classes
She acknowledge that people like her are part of the problem. I think she is very self aware that this is part of her class to an extent. But that's not really the case either. Shes like a teacher, lower class PMC. The way they pay professors at these schools compared to how they pay admins is night and day.
I'd recommend you read some of her works or listen to more of her talks. I see where you are coming from. But the little sketch they showed from "Mr Show" was a quick and funny way of explaining how these PMC people are created. The system is self reinforcing (cybernetics). She briefly mentioned the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari. There is an entire philosophical tradition stemming from Marx that she couldn't properly convey in simple English without making this unaccessible for people outside of the field. But yeah she's fairly aware of the system and ideas on why it is so hard to make significant change.
I just don’t understand her point: She’s talking about the PMC as a group of people to hate. Okay, then what? Is she interested in overthrowing capitalism or not? That was the Ehrenreichs’ goal when they wrote about the PMC as a way to understand better how to create a broad working-class coalition to confront the elites. She seems to have gotten too distracted by this axe-grinding against her own community to want to overcome the barriers we face in the fight against capitalism.
Fantastic episode, Jacobin needs more from Catherine Liu
There is no feedback to the managerial class beyond profit
This explains hipsters. Seriously.
11:13
Bingo.
I saw this first hand.
The college educated high tech jobs that was supposed to take over the factory jobs after NAFTA. I saw how the salaried professional became the contracted worker, making room for a salaried manager to manage positions that were already self managed by the knowledgable worker. That manager position had class solidarity, and did alot of gate keeping.
They even gave it a name: figurehead.
Kissing up to these figureheads meant effectively you own self demotion, because you did all the work anyway. They just managed, took credit, and survived company downfalls, they even failed upwards.
The contracted high tech workers, pitted against each other, had no solidarity.
You are describing my work place. The figurehead manager just sits in meetings all day and relays to us the work we need to do. Pretty much everything else is self run in our team
Hope to hear her talk about how participating in PMC basically ties your hands in terms of feminism. Big Girl Boss tried to trick us into forgetting it was the boss part that is the bad part 😶
Wonderful analysis. Thanks.
ABSOLUTE QUEEN!!!!!!!!
If you can edit your blurb attached to the video, you should mention Liu's book by name.
Oh Jeus, I was so confused. I assumed for the first while they were talking about private military companies.
Thanks. I enjoyed that conversation.
it’s all status anxiety
About the solar panels - these people have no idea of the sheer scale that would be required for the generation of sufficient electricity by a centralized utility. You would have to sacrifice huge swathes of land for solar farms, I mean as big as cities, bigger, and you still wouldn't have reliability because solar is inherently unreliable. Solar panels on individual buildings for say water heating is the best way to use solar.
Solar plants use reflective mirrors to heat up water that runs turbines with steam basically, not solar panels. Although vast areas such as roofs of cities can be fitted with solar panels, this is happening already.
Modern solar panels has become very good at creating electricity, even on cloudy days, throughout the year. It is stored and used locally in AI guided microgrids.
Changing big unreliable grids, that may leave areas size of Texas without electricity, towards modern microgrids is a huge infrastructure project that has started already at some parts of planet.
TV advertising suggests that most people in America are African Americans and the perfect couple is a racially mixed couple ….what the hell is that all about???
I read Catherine's book. It was great. I really liked this talk. Her other one for Jacobin was totally lost for me how architecture is responsible for corruption of democracy.
So my question is, can you make a connection to a workplace shift where management was hired inhouse many times with no degree to where employee turnover raised to a ridiculous level and management is only hired with a degree who's fresh out of school and absolutely no work experience and even less people skills? The problem seems far more complex than its "PMCs" fault? Seems like everyone is at fault. There's a serious lack of work ethic and professionalism in all sides. To simple place the onus on one side when all sides are to blame seems counterintuitive.
Great conversation!
Excellent video
Brilliant
loved this talk. feel like there are some resonances with some of the things in The Undercommons
Great starting point, thank you very much. I would love to pick the professor’s brain re. the significance of the AMA or even better the American Psychiatric Association. To my mind, defense against grift is the most substantial pillar of the scientistic hegemony of expertise, which breaks down solidarity among the subjects of medicine and psychiatry precisely so the grift can be monopolized. Look forward to more of this kind of conversation.
Great insight on the PMC "Kanban/Six sigma" parenting philosophy.
"Balanc[ing] out the empathy ledgers", what a great line, Ariella! (Gonna steal it.)
100% agree. Managers suck. They are often the "fat" of a bloated bureaucracy.... but... let's not conflate the ills of a failing bureaucracy with the purported "benefits" of Socialism. On the surface, it seems great. BUT Socialism by nature REQUIRES central planning. This effectively gives implicit power the the very "Class" you are lambasting.
@@tachiroakisu5128 not necessarily. Read an old fashioned book like John Rustin"s "Unto This Last", for example. It's true we always need "leadership", because any effective project at all requires people to take initiative, whether that project be socialist, capitalist, or any other. But our leaders need not (indeed, MUST not) embody and project the extremist individualism and solipsistic egomania of the current professional managerial class.
@@rgzhaffie your last sentence. completely in agreement. How then do we achieve "redistribution" without a designated "redistributor"?
@@tachiroakisu5128 we already have loads of experience at this, in dozens of countries. The answer is, first of all, a professional civil service, with an aggressively enforced firewall separating it from political appointees. Second of all, you AVOID the need for more than de minimis redistribution in the first place, by such means as aggressive antitrust enforcement, high minimum wages, strong labor laws, heavy estate taxes, codetermination principles like those enacted by Germany and other countries, and strong encouragement for cooperative enterprises, like Corbyn's Labour Party proposal to enact a "right of first refusal" allowing workers to acquire democratic control of businesses which would otherwise be shuttered or consolidated, with access to public assistance in the form of government backed loan guarantees to do so.
I'm going to join the PMC before they invent some kind of new degree higher than a phd
On the subject of raising kids from the get-go to be competitive, Christopher Lasch mentions his failing to do just that with his children in the introduction to The True and Only Heaven. Sounds like they had a great education, but he notes that he didn't make them cutthroat comparatives which is the only way to advance in the world that he saw being created. I believe he wrote at in 1992. So you could, with the right outlook, see what was coming even back then.
As some one who read Marx with deep respect, lived in a communist (I mean, is there such country that’s purely) counties for years, a lover of the Selfish Gene, worked in a blue collar Midwest town for 10+ years interacting with many non PMC, and sad outlook to humanity, my self a P, I found this discussion deeply troubling.
I love the romantic thought from academia P who, disconnected with reality, and make plenty money benefitting from such system, arrogantly criticize what herself is. So just out of curiosity, is she going to abandon her credential and go around and cast her ideology as a nun? Her own empty talk was no less harm then the group she’s critiquing.
Not sure what your problem with this is. It seems odd to dismiss this criticism. She is living within a system that is in a full blown crisis and commenting on it accurately. The more you get into the discussion the more you see that the PMC as she herself states, is becoming more and more stratified. In other words, not everyone within it is benefitting in the same way. There are fractures within so to speak. Pay attention to what is being said here.She has the whole problem right in the crosshairs.
Hyper- perfect is psycho- narcissism !
I appreciated the doc's talk about wanting to speak on these issues in accessible language. A lot of the time, I was lost in all this. She's right in that all this sounds really bizarre to someone who's not part of the educated upper classes. I get enough to find it interesting, but so much of the language and some of the concepts just sail over me. Personally, it's a problem I have with people on the left. Sometimes they get really esoteric, and it's really off-putting when you occasionally get people telling you to pull out of dictionary. Screw you. Just talk in my language and meet me where I am. The right may spout a lot of nonsense, but I can at least understand the words and generally follow their logic (for lack of a better word), no matter how crazy it is. It's even worse if you've never worked a professional job, if you've never participated in social media, or ever lived in this elite places. It's like hearing about another country. I've also noticed the feelings of shame she speaks about and how it's percolated down. I see it in myself, and it's paralyzing. You just want to say to hell with it all so you can go back to enjoying things without worrying about it. Self-criticism is important, as is being able to critique things you like -- but there's a limit. If you're going for purity, you're never gonna be happy. You wanna take good care of your kids, but you want them to be able to have their own lives and just be kids. People shouldn't shame you for letting them walk to a park or take the train on their own. You want to do the right thing, but the Bible reminds you that it should be internal first and foremost. You're not supposed to go making a spectacle of your piety; it's vain. The Lord knows what's inside, so you shouldn't be pretending to puff yourself up. Is "virtue signaling" just the modern way of saying two-faced or putting on airs? I find it weird how modern words and expressions are created to say things we already had words and phrases for, but that's life, I guess.
Virtue signaling vs putting on airs, I think, is like getting a “Everyone is Equal in This Household” sign in your front yard vs acting like you are doing well when you aren’t. “Look how good I am” vs “Look how good I am doing”
Catherine Liu has so much to say can she be interviewed alone. Why does there always have to be three people on the show.
what's the difference between the PMC and the petit bourgeoisie/labor aristocracy?
Amazing. I love this.
How hard is it to replace BIAS 'Training" with a reminder to 'walk a mile in my shoes'? As we've abandoned civics and humanities in education, we've abandoned simple humanity that has been learned over centuries and eons of religious training, philosophy, poetry, music and literature. It ALL matters and isn't f***king rocket science.
Interesting thought. How exactly does one teach empathy without taking a long time to really ensure it is absorbed? Extreme example: Do you think empathy can be taught to a sociopath within a few weeks "training" before starting a job? I would be inclined to say "no"
@@tachiroakisu5128 Of course you can't teach empathy to a sociopath. It's either missing or irreparably broken in them.Sadly, America has chosen to discard empathy in exchange tolerance or indifference.
@@tachiroakisu5128 As a nation we've created a society where character doesn't matter. We're always astonished when we see it. Empathy is learned in childhood and cultivated by the community. We value credentials more than integrity or character.
Coming from the "heterodox" anti-woke dissident centrist community (lol), I agree with everything you say about the PMC, but...the marxism, the *Maoism*....I couldn't be more opposed. I wonder what common ground we could find in practical terms
worker owned co-ops, plain and simple. Richard Wolfe is an economist that you will most likely connect with. I was taken back too by the Mao comment. (Yikes!) As an Econ buff, I prefer my Robert Owen.
Is there a link to the "Mr. Show" show starting at 21:10?
Really glad I grew up in the middle of the woods, ‘80s latchkey as hell. 100% like the Stranger Things kids. “Private property” signs the farmers put up for hunters might as well have grown on the trees naturally as they blended in with the rest of the background flora (we went and explored wherever we wanted.)
The way “yuppies” raise their kids is pure lunacy to me. Always a million scheduled activities and constant pressure to prepare for Social Darwinism by getting a leg up in self-reifying systems of hierarchical ass kissing.
The problem I have with PMC culture and modern Democrats in general is I grew up haunted by religion. I learned a lot of the psychological tricks behind religious based forms of control and shame and dogma and now that I live in the city surrounded by this new culture I find some disturbing similarities, especially as a person with a lot of cynical attitudes about capitalism. Sometimes I struggle to see how this is any sort of improvement.
I just see a lot of scared people wherever I go who just want to get by but are utterly dominated by externally imposed causes for neuroticism.
It makes you wonder if we can escape religion as you experienced it as a kid--if maybe it’s just natural for a society(or our society) to impose a guilt based ideology to regulate behavior
@@alexberkowitz5897 Humans are driven by their Wille zur Macht and are largely total shit heads because of it and most people do not deserve the time of day, unless one is wandering through a "dérive" and intentionally seeking out variation and surfing the chaos like some sort of RNG based story telling engine
I’ve watched several jacobin videos. I’m surprised by the level of vitriol against what you call the professional managerial class. I expected it against the billionaires, politicians. It seems that every every ideology identifies an unexpected group to be the target of its anger and frustration instead of trying to win it over.
I see this on the left and right.
If this was 1917, the pmc would have declared themselves as the vanguard
In a sense they are. Except this time round Neoliberalism is the revolution. Depressingly true.
Those would have been the progressives like teddy roosevelt, Jane addams.
this was so great thats all i can say
The only people I ever see criticizing this are PMC types. As somebody who does hard labour, PMC types, even those who claim to be on my side, never actually stick their neck out.
I love Liu but I'm a bit perplexed with class definitions here, the whole blue/white division is outmoded in the 21st century & has been for some time.
To paraphrase Rick Roderick, I consider someone working class if they can't live without a few paychecks w/o seriously hurting.
I have met & have looked down by skilled blue collar tradesmen who are definitely in an higher economic class than I a so called white collar worker that works in a A/C office in a low (sewer) level IT position in a hospital. Am I PMC or even wannabe PMC? I would think not, I have had very little formal education, I'm soon to be 59 so I came from a time when it wasn't required & my siblings are all first gen college educated.
Weber 's Three-component theory of stratification
I have to disagree on the question of scale and renewable energy technology. The investor owned utilities are the most adamant in opposing rooftop solar. They have been trying for years to stop any subsidies for rooftops solar. They succeeded in Arizona, of course, but had more trouble in California. So they leaned on public relations and found a way to get the California public utilities commission to agree that subsidizing rooftop solar was an equity issue. This is a very sophisticated onslaught by capitalist investors to snip photovoltaic solar in the bud. A related issue is the need to create microgrids and more local manageable systems of electricity, networking, without enormous companies, like Pacific Gas & Electric. Microgrids would be supported by such things as rooftop solar. It is a myth that only upper middle-class people have photovoltaic panels on their roof. Many nonprofits working with working class communities are putting rooftop solar on the houses of elderly retirees in cities like Oakland. And the people installing these panels are entry-level working class people that have gained some basic skills and now have well paying jobs in the installation of photovoltaic solar. So I hope you reconsider what I think is a knee-jerk argument against small scale, photovoltaic solar.
Pmc = nobles, I say derisively
*49:00** of course! you dont choose class solidarity, that is its power!* traitors have to be recruited, & constantly fighting wi themself - & hope to hold out long enough for the worker to win, so all PMC can just join. _JC
This is not the most dillusionist class...the most delusional is the ruling class, comrades.
Read Bromma's Worker Elite.
I don’t understand why it has to be one or the other. Why can’t we talk about anti bias training and economic solutions? Does Jacobin have an agenda or do they really think that we have eliminated discrimination because especially for rural and lower income people that not true.
The person of superior ritual acts but no one responds to him. Whereon he rolls up his sleeves and coerces them.
When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is morality. When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Is the pmc not part of the working class?
Human Resources is the boss’s ears and mouth.
17:45 great question, better answer
*57:30** we can fix nearly every medical limitation, w single specialist training in one surgery, or more use of Physician-Nurses & Associate-Physicians.* the multi decade elite training nonsense is unhealthy. _JC
PMC - "pseudo-enlightened packaging", phony to the core.
*1:01:00** i only encountered babs via CIA circles.* make of that what you will. maybe just "kids rebel." _JC
1:04:00 *i like all this. & you can go to yale or harvard, or be born a Baron, & still be a Leftist. we purity test at our own peril* (tho so to does ignoring class solidarity & it's power. but it can only be countered by offering another place to call home. for the sacrifice of power & luxury.) _JC
The PMC is the liberal super-ego ... hell yes.
who the fuck uses pmc for professional managerial class it is my under standing that it more commonly means private military contractor.
Trump as id monster, haha, I love it.
I’m 13 minutes in and still have no idea what PMC stands for it would have been nice to have an explanation for a person just walking in with no other information. It’s kinda weird and gatekeepie for laypersons to not explain the acronyms Your using.
PMC stands for "professional managerial class" - my best attempt at defining it is anyone who makes decent money and is neither ultra wealthy or working class (e.g. project management, engineering, data analysis, etc.)
@@mahashrayasundararaman1562 I think that’s great but I also remember being frustrated not knowing and it took 13 mins for an actual explanation or definition but I guess that’s what kept me watching but in the future I recommend explaining things like a person is 5 because your going about it like they already know but they don’t. I also think there is no need to put the Middle Class into pedantic groups they are already disappearing as it is.
@@samsalamander8147 ahh, you’d have to talk to the OP then - I didn’t make this video. I agree with you and think PMC is a weird bit of gate keeping. As if you have to work with your body or make low wages to be critical of capitalism.
@@mahashrayasundararaman1562 I’m sorry, I misunderstood and misread your comment.
@@samsalamander8147 no worries!
This feels to me like the pot calling the kettle black, sorry y'all
Well. There are many great points here. However the blatant class reductionism which aims to disregard the various intersectionalities clearly present seems misguided. There also seems to be a faint thread of anti-intellectualism here.
Why not build class consciousness within many different contexts and within many different groups? Why should we disregard the theoretical contributions of academics and researchers? I don't think oversimplification is quite the way.
Why would you use an acronym in the title, and not even explain it in the details. Quite frustrating. "Professional managerial class" that is OBSCURE.
We need Solar Paint😮
The probblem, sisters, is the military industrial complex...the class system analysis is what we need to bring it down...developing the leftishness of liberalism....this idea of the body not working with the mind...another rediculous idea, sisters.
I wonder if these young hosts *really* know about the publication they're employed by.
The irony, indeed.
Go on.
?
Haha. They literally talked about the sort of virtue signaling and anti-solidarity of comments like this one in the video. Good joke pal, even if you don't realize it's on you.
@@kurtdoe1 oh look, "buzzword bingo"... the meta-irony of your comment is that your use of "signal words" itself is its own propaganda. Inception. A dream WITHIN a dream. All joking aside, I am not here to present you with a prepared argument, I dont have one, I just highly suggest you read the mission and statements of the Magazine's founder. Things are usually in the open, they just *seem* conspiratorial because people dont like to read. Erudition is sedition, in a illiterate world.
65
Communism can work if the laws are transparent and REASON does the ruling (not Representatives, not the Popular Vote). Every Gov. issue should have a list of policy proposals (made by any citizen), and they should all have a Score number. (for example: the no of people advantaged by the policy proposal, multiplied with the degree of advantage - judged in accordance with Maslow's table of human needs. From this number we can subtract the negative part representing the number of people disadvantaged multiplied with the degree of disadvantage).
Thus the best (most logical) policy should put into effect, and if it turns out to be fail when put into practice, then analyze what factors were overlooked, and / or get to the next best policy proposal. At least we'll LEARN (even if its by mistakes).
Basically a scientific way of Governing. Imo the Popular Vote is easily influenced (by the rich) and it can overlook both the perspective of productivity (the best solution to increase productivity) AND the perspective of humanity/morality (imagine a country where 95% of the people are deeply religious..and want to replace science with the bible, or judge gays, etc). And the Representative Democracy also contains the flaws of Direct Democracy, because the politician will also be selected because of Populism, but he and his party also have a hidden agenda, or alongside the populist policy they propose, they can include (and thus make you "swallow" a policy that you don't want (like war)).
"Communism can work if..." let me just stop you right there and refer to you Economics 101. Centrally planned economies historically dont scale well. First three chapters of "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell are life changing.
@@tachiroakisu5128 "Centrally planned economies historically dont"
Let me just stop you right there. That doesn't mean anything. A few centuries ago they would say "all flight attempts historically went tragic".
Or think of a historical "detail" that you're completely ignoring:
The US was/is in direct conflict with non-capitalist countries and went to war with them. Vietnam itself had the official justification of preventing the spread of the "Communist virus".
This means that the internal economies of these countries matter little to none, compared to the MILITARY (or other forms of WAR) aspect compared with the US.
In other words: If the US wants to, it can destroy all countries with the color yellow on their flag. And you'll say "Historically all countries with yellow on their flag went tragic". (You're not realizing the EXTERNAL factor)
@@tachiroakisu5128 And btw, i'm born in 1984 "Socialist" Romania (Eastern European).
And i can tell you:
1. Soviet era "Communism" was an extension of the Russian Empire, which invaded the eastern European countries militarily and installed Russian Puppet dictators. No free elections, no "proletariat owning and controlling the factories". (right from the start. things do not "started Communistic and then degraded into Dictatorship"). It had nothing to do with Communism, EXCEPT for Central Planning.
2. Because of this Central Planning economy, most people (over 40) here say life was better in the Soviet era (because jobs were guaranteed, they weren't longer than 8hr/day, and you'd get your own apartment and start your family).
3. In the 80's after the US grabbed the middle East and kick out/replaced the Russians in Afghanistan, all these "Communist" countries (which were part of the Russian block), which desperately needed oil, went downhill. And ALL countries collapsed not just in the same year, but in the same month.
This should make you realize the importance of the EXTERNAL factor.
Is this a "life-changing" text for you? (you seem to be life-changing after all sorts of books)
@@tachiroakisu5128 Sowell's entire purpose is the intellectual and moral justification of greed - H/T JKGalbraith
@@monroefuches2707 it's easy to google for quotes to satisfy your confirmation bias, but I honestly and empathetically suggest checking out the text. As a socialist minded person myself, i identified with Sowell (even after reading "Kapital") because Sowell himself was Socialist. from early youth through Harlem poverty as a Black man during civil rights movement and well through his graduate studies...so he ruminates on the pragmatism of Socialism quite a bit (mostly as someone intially trying to apply it to American life) this is why his voice on this is so relevant.
1st-world problems
Robin and DiAngelo are great though.
D'Angelo is my favorite singer
@@theelectricant98 U mean the pickup artist? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
What a load of nonsense
What part? It is not useful to say this without further elucidation such that the terms of your refutation are stated plainly, otherwise we have nothing but a thought terminating cliche that leads nowhere. Poppycock!
Oh look, someone else who has actually read history. Sorry, my friend, unfortunately your erudite ways are not accepted here. You have to be self-entitled, sophomorically arrogant, and most importantly: neophyte, to understand why this is illuminating.
What an informative response (eye roll).