this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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chapotraphouse
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No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
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OP is oversimplifying a complex situation. I don't see any contradiction in my remarks.
Government bureaucrats can be part of the working class, but this depends on your definition of bureaucrat. I wouldn't consider an NIH scientist to be a bureaucrat, but some would. Most bureaucrats I would consider to be part of the professional managerial class, which should be analyzed separately from the working class due to their reactionary interests.
The working class is comprised of everyone whose relationship with the means of production is at its core selling their labor. That's it. There's no reason to split hairs about who's PMC or not. The fundamental and likely difference between a judge and the clerical worker under that judge is that the judge likely makes enough money and comes from a social background that makes them a shareholder of american capitalism.
Anything more than that and you'll be talking past each other because you're thinking of bankers who were turned into department heads and they'll be thinking of middle income administrators. Meanwhile DOGE is spends its days firing park rangers and such. Dismantling a state institution isn't good or bad on the condition that its staffed by capitalists or not. It's good or bad on the basis of the policy that is being attacked. This being the US, everything outside of spending on the military or Israel is under attack.
The PMC are more akin to cops. Their wage is earned through facilitating capitalist governance/violence. A social services worker doesn't produce a marketable commodity or value for capitalists the same way a waiter or factory worker do—instead they play a role as a relief valve for the contradictions of capitalism.
There’s a very strict definition of working class, and even when you stretch the definiton of labor aristocrat, some middle manager at the SSA is not it, and that’s most of the tens of thousands who were fired.
This is not a complex situation. You said it yourself, ‘When things get bad, the rich don't hesitate to eat their own. It's poor people being used as cannon fodder on both sides and poor people suffering the collateral damage.’