Working Class Man vs 'Pie-In-the-Sky' Intellectual

What is the difference between the working class man and the ‘pie-in-the-sky’ intellectual? Is it a simple lack of class consciousness? An anti-intellectualism or anti-communism sentiment? Sandy Carter defends Barbara and John Enrenreichs’ configuration of a third class, the Professional-Managerial Class, by attempting to explain the “peculiar” hostility between the working class and the left, between manual and intellectual labor. She argues that this hostility has, consistently and wrongfully, been chalked-up to differences in lifestyle and education as well as divisions born of a highly stratified working class. And yet, her intended focus on the texture and depth of the controversial PMC discourse due to its “human dimension” never seems to transcend this traditional explanation or provide the pragmatic enlightenment which Pat Walker so pathologically and defensively attributes to the works contained in Between Labor and Capital

The PMC theory displaces the antiquated Marxist viewpoint that the populace is divided into only two key classes, workers and owners. According to the Ehrenreichs, the PMC is shaped by its objectively contradictory position and function within modern, advanced capitalism’s social division of labor. For example, an engineer is forced to sell his labor for capital but he also functions to manage, maintain, and service the working class. Moreover, the interests of the engineer lie in the subordination of the capitalist and the continued subjugation of the working class. The development of this broad middle strata, as seen through the engineer, must fundamentally alter our conception of class struggle and relations.

With this in mind, Sandy Carter turns to interviews to capture “some of the primary complaints of the US working class regarding their labor” which underscore the enormous disparity between working class “income, jobs, community, family and sexual relations” and those of the PMC – the nature of class relations. Ultimately, the interviews paint a picture of a populace riddled with guilt, hostility, insecurity, and a significant deficit of intellectual capacity. Members of the working class are depressed because their lives are repetitive and, essentially, meaningless. In this analysis the distinction between the PMC and the capitalist is not given significant weight. The PMC is just another function of working-class oppression. Perhaps Carter could have explored how human psychology – our psychological needs and processes - allows for the reproduction of class as a system of identification or the nature reverse hostility, the elitism of the leftist, as a real complication to the notion of the proletarianization of everyone, as Carter calls it. The argument seems to simply establish that to be a member of the working class is a tough lot and the PMC, though infinitely better-off, should care about the feelings of their local beautician or plumber.

In conclusion, the PMC will not be the primary base of social discontent but an alliance between the two classes should be encouraged. “The working class need not be glorified and the PMC need not take on any false humility. What is required is a willingness to recognize and stuggle with the differences that left unchallenged will continue to replicate the relations of capitalist society”(113).

So, first thing first, substitute the PMC’s deeply engrained desire to instruct, lead and control with an understanding that knowledge and skill must be dispersed, shared and mutually developed.

So, first thing first . . . ?