I made an effort post in the genzedong general thread and I thought it would make a good standalone post. This is the context: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/393476
That’s likely part of it. I think part of it also has to do with what the U.S. materially controls. Having so much of the internet’s infrastructure in burgerland along with insider access to the companies who own and run their services on that infrastructure allows for both easy surveillance and the ability to propagate propaganda on a scale that puts TV and radio to shame. The strategic importance of workers who do the labor to enable this, along with these workers requiring more training (both initially and continously) relative to others, puts an upward pressure on the wages. Another factor is that it is possible to make a software product where the only thing you need is software. What I mean by this is you don’t have to go nuts on buying means of production and land in order to become a code kulak. There are exceptions to this of course (uber, amazon, etc.), and of course making good software isn’t child’s play even if it’s not rocket surgery, but you can easily have a code kulak whose business is separated from material stuff enough that they’ll end up with an even more skewed perspective of production than your vanilla petite boug. On top of all this: remember that infrastructure I mentioned earlier? If you’re a code kulak looking to run your business, there’s a good chance you’ll use infrastructure owned by the big porkies in order to make money. With stuff like AWS, Azure, and Google cloud, all the code kulaks who want to use the convenient way of hosting their service is going to have their interests materially aligned with the big porkies. Sprinkle in the general state of education about history in the west being shit and liberalism (and consequentially, idealism) being the way most people are brought up to think about how the world works. You’ll get programmers who are dilettantes in topics like philosophy and the natural sciences that try to use their technical knowledge as a way of understanding things that are outside of its intended scope. This ends up with a flavor of pseudery that is kind of ridiculous. You get things like James Damore, the singularity, and longtermism. Since the wages are high due to factors I listed above, you also get the effect of people who only give a shit about money seeing software development as a way to get rich. Combine all of the things I mentioned and you get an industry that selects for and produces some really bourgeoisified workers.
Tech workers are absolutely labour aristocracy in the west. Capitalists aren’t happy with the status quo though, and have been trying to bring wages down for a while now. I imagine all the layoffs right now are at least partially intended to bring down the wages in tech sector.
This is finally getting at least some people in tech to rethink things. If there’s a big economic crash, which is likely, then much of the tech sector will be wiped out the way we saw during Y2K crash. I think it’s going to be important to use this opportunity to get people in tech to understand that they are workers and their interests lie with the working class.
I don’t think tech workers are petite bourgeois, they are just labor aristocracy. They don’t own any means of production, most of them just work for some company. They make good wages but that can be taken away in a heartbeat, as we are seeing now with the tech layoffs. Their interests align with the proletariat because they need 1) stable employment, 2) low cost of living. A lot of them do have the uber-cringey California Ideology tho.
I don’t think tech workers are petite bourgeois, they are just labor aristocracy.
That’s mostly what I was getting at. The part about them becoming petite bourgeois is if they use their high income to make that jump, and how the type of work effects the flavor of liberalism you get.
TBF, I don’t know many programmers IRL who are business owners, although pretty much anytime I bring up something I’m working on in my spare time to friends or family I always get hit with “You should sell that to people” and it drives me nuts. It might have colored my perception.
“Their interests align with the proletariat because they need 1) stable employment, 2) low cost of living.”
Labor aristocrats share a class relation with us however their income (their benefit from the status quo) align them with the bourgeois class’ interests in maintaining capitalism and thus the exploitation of themselves and us. They’re economic interests are masochistic basically.
Good point. They are expecting to buy an investment property in their lifetime and hence to become petite bourgeois. I guess their interests align with the somewhat progressive section of the petite bourgeois, and the California Ideology basically epitomises that.
I guess their interests align with the somewhat progressive section of the petite bourgeois, and the California Ideology basically epitomises that.
This is the case with the petty bourgeoisie and, to a lesser extent, the labor aristocracy. They are torn between the interests of the bourgeoisie and proletariat. They still benefit and make their living due to capitalism, yet at the same time these groups are always in danger of being proletarianized.
Do you have any advice for comrades who work in tech/engineering/other highly paid professions for ways to organise your coworkers?
Unfortunately I do not. Hell, the biggest obstacle to organizing where I work is that I have no idea what demands we could have when we’re already so well compensated. With the mass layoffs at big tech companies though, this may be changing.
Agreed 100% I cut my teeth consulting, big pay lots of projects delivered with very little insight as to how they affected the end users or how they performed even. Deliver and move on.
Cybernetic Revolutionaries changed my life at the point where getting better at my job wasn’t fulfilling anymore. Couldn’t recommend it enough.
yes, but literally every industry is going to be completely filled with liberals. we’re in america and its the dominant ideology. I don’t think software engineering has any particular aspects that any other industry doesn’t.
That’s definitely true, although it’s a lot easier for one to put their head in the sand with a large salary and good benefits. My post was more about why porky has so much incentive to pay software engineers so much as well as how the work leads to the type of liberalism you see in the stereotypical tech bro.
Speaking for myself, I live a comfortable enough life off the job that I always have a nagging feeling at the back of my head that I have more to lose than just my chains.
