Radical Engagements: Working Class Men Are Not Okay by Ryan Zickgraf

We continue talking about the decline of the blue-collar working class in the US.
Source: jacobin.com/20...
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Host: C. Derick Varn ( Twitter: @varnvlog, Bluesky @varnvlog.bsky.social)
Intro Musics: Spaceship Revolution by Etienne Roussel (Solo Intro), Bitterlake (Political Intro), Bitterlake (Strange Intro), The Siege of Kalameth by Jon Björk (Main Show Intro), Teknique by Anthony Earls (Nailing It Down Intro).
Outro Music: Let Down by Issue AB
Intro and Outro Video Design: C. Derick Varn (Main Show Intro, Show Outro), Djene Bajalan (Solo Intro, Political Intro, Space Outro), Bitterlake (Strange Intro)
Art Design: Corn ( / cornflow ) and C. Derick Varn
The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World

[@getcrepuscular9755]

Thankful that this was recorded earlier bc the govt inability to respond to hurricanes just disappeared from the press after the election

[@VarnVlog]

@@getcrepuscular9755 that too

[@sheriffliberty9302]

I honestly dislike using "working class" and "blue collar" synonymously on top of the false education category. Plenty of low skilled and poorly paid jobs are not manual labor blue collar jobs (maybe even most non-college workers fit in this category at this point!).

[@dudehighmrksup]

The majority, 54% last time I checked, of college graduates are working jobs that don’t require a college degree. What some people would call underemployment.
And as more and more young people go to school, at least compared to older gens, these markers won’t be so useful. A solid amount of my friends with degrees work jobs in retail, logistics, service sector, etc

[@sankarchaya]

It really rubs me the wrong way when leftists differentiate "PMC" from "working class" where "working class" means lacking a college education ... I've worked as an adjunct professor for a long time and I've seen fellow adjuncts fall into tough times. I do not know what kind of material conditions unite Robin DiAngelo with an adjunct professor or school teacher. But there are also serious divides between college educated workers and workers lacking college education that must be bridged. I know the author of the article was stuck with the sociological frameworks of the studies he had available to him but still
The issues facing working class men are particularly volatile ... lots of hyperbole about "fascism" in US politics but people aren't looking at the sociological conditions in the US that actually make those kinds of politics more attractive.

[@wokeisweak]

If PMC stood for Political Managerial Class it would be clearer and more useful teem. The problem with PMC's in my mind is that their labor power is exerted - by choice - to impose fake socialistic ideology on the workers below them. Because PMC jobs require qualifications, one must pursue these positions, and thus PMCs are choosing to be ideological workers whose role in the division of labor is to deceive and manipulate (manage) the working class. This political in terms of their "politics" but also political in terms of their power.
I agree with Varn that it's wrong to think of PMC as separate class, but it certainly is a useful category to understand the contradictions within the working class that hinder socialist agency.

[@wokeisweak]

Adjunct professor PMC could easily earn less wage than an undocumented immigrant carpenter, but the adjunct prof is most likely training (adding value to labor power) students in bullshit ideology that seems progressive or even socialist but is actually employed in the workforce as valuable management tools. That's what wokeness is. Woke seems socialist but is a management tool to perpetuate intraclass antagonisms.
Even when training students in topics that aren't obviously ideological, teachers of all kinds are grooming students to conform to the capitalist division of labor peaceably.
Intentionally communist teachers or professors or other PMC could conceivably act as double-agents and counteract their objective position as political managers with a communist subjectivity. Thays a key role in the revolutionary movement. PMC are valuable to communism, but in their default mode are a problem.