Episode #066 // The Professional Managerial Class // with Catherine Liu

Corporate Therapy

In Episode 66 we discuss how a relatively small class of professionals, who do not own the means of production, side with those who do and work against social change to elevate workers’ conditions.
The Professional Managerial Class as a “middle layer” has tokenized self-optimization and hustle mentality and created a system of supposed moral superiority which works in favor of conserving their position of relative wealth and power. Spoiler alert: If you’re reading this, you’re probably part of the “PMC” ;)
The episode in a nutshell: Mary-Jane ponders the come-back of the term “class”, Catherine depicts PMC rhetoric as a secular way to moralize class difference and Human realizes how the tokenization of good deeds (virtue signaling) can hinder actual progress.
Shownotes:

• Catherine Liu, Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class, Book (Erscheint auf Deutsch im Januar 2023)
• Catherine Liu, American Idyll: academic Antielitism as Cultural Critique, Buch
• Sigfried Kracauer, Die Angestellten, Book
• C. Wright Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, Book
• Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State, Book
• Wolfgang M. Schmitt & Stefan Schulz, Die Neuen Zanziger - Salon, Podcast (Paywall)