JF

I didn't get a chance to respond to this earlier because I was at work but there's a reason that the lines between class and culture are blurred in the PMC debate, which is that the "PMC's" (not a fan of the term) class position is defined by their special culture.

Class is defined by relations to the means of production. And "PMC" class status is defined by a relation in which ownership of cultural capital, not (or at least not only) the sale of labor power, determines one's income. It is a distinct sphere of economic activity.

lately i think the class we want to talk about is the result of a highly distributed and privatized state -- the nonprofits, NGOs, advocacy groups who provide social services in lieu of the state, participate in formulation of law/regulation through legal advocacy, consulting etc

it's our version of "the new class," with a state bureaucracy replaced by this more unwieldy thing. it's highly porous and generative ideologically, able to absorb and adapt anything and bend it to its own interests.

That's absolutely a real thing, but it's also an outgrowth of a far broader shift in advanced economies where intellectual, technical, and professional labor comes to predominate in terms of economic importance.

yeah, i think this is where the pmc line of argument loses its strength tho. the more politically salient issue is the tendency of the phenomenon i describe to subsume the interests of traditional left political constituencies to its own, among other thing.

Well this is the thing. Is the PMC angle an ideological play for political salience, or is it a class analysis? If it's going to be the latter it's going to have to focalize the broad historical shift that's occurring even if that risks losing its (political) strength.

i don't think we're trying to achieve a total analysis of class society in the US -- there'd much more to that. i think the phenomenon we're seeing has clear material roots in philanthropic interests, privatization of traditional state functions, etc. it's a different thing imo.