Awareness in general is already worthwhile, but has it been useful for other things? E.g. Changing your views on government labor policy, worker-friendly laws, etc.
1) I've developed a vague notion that much of the last 3-4 decades has, along with other (mostly bad) social, political, and economic changes in the time after trust-busting got neutered in the 1970s and Reaganism and neoliberalism took over (RIP neoliberalism, at least on one side of the aisle, LOL, glad to see you finally go even if the rest of that's all a shit-show) has been a kind of one-sided upper-middle civil war. It sure looks like the finance guys (solidly part of that class, for the most part) teamed up with the professional managerial class (the least-solidly part of that class, of the major traditional categories therein) to do their best to shove doctors, academics, and to some extent lawyers, down into the Middle, with no organized resistance on the other side.
2) I see a lot of how programmers are treated through this lens. Companies seem extremely reluctant to give programmers upper-middle perks. I think #1 is part of why: managers really, really don't want to mint a new upper-middle cohort even as they're busy clearing the field for only themselves and finance bros, and programmers (lots of us, at least) have the income to be there, but sit in a weird half-in-half-out for the upper middle, because we've mostly been denied things like private offices and certain other liberties, and subjected to micromanagement and humiliating hazing-ritual hiring processes, even as incomes soar and the snacks are good or whatever. Socially we are firmly "under" even a lot of other parts of companies that make less money, and part of that's come through cultivation of certain attitudes about programmers, and denial of "higher" perks.
Beyond that I was already pretty firmly on the side of stronger labor, better labor protection laws, and far more unionization, and Class didn't take me any farther from those things.
I read his optimism for his supposed "Class X" and the plain fact that none of that turned out to be what he thought it was as, if anything, another reason to be for the above. Organization and force (read broadly, I don't necessarily mean stuff like "hitting people") will get us to a better place, not hoping to be saved by a social movement.
Wow I wasn't aware of the realities of #1 but I certainly lived through #2 before I became an independent organizer. I'm buying Class on my next bookstore trip -- thank you for expanding your thoughts!
P.S. Self-plug: you might find my newsletter last month [0] mildly interesting. See the section "My Own Views"
> 2) I see a lot of how programmers are treated through this lens. Companies seem extremely reluctant to give programmers upper-middle perks. I think #1 is part of why: managers really, really don't want to mint a new upper-middle cohort even as they're busy clearing the field for only themselves and finance bros, and programmers (lots of us, at least) have the income to be there, but sit in a weird half-in-half-out for the upper middle, because we've mostly been denied things like private offices and certain other liberties, and subjected to micromanagement and humiliating hazing-ritual hiring processes, even as incomes soar and the snacks are good or whatever.
Indeed, when you describe it, it does seem like the programmers are a medieval feudal peasant class that is let some freedom but actively kept down by the feudal aristocracy.
> (read broadly, I don't necessarily mean stuff like "hitting people")
I don't know of any period in history where the elite let go of their power and privilege without violence.
