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The Pitfalls of Polemic, or How to Criticize the Crankiest Class of Critics

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A Review of Catherine Liu, Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021). “It is obvious that people of this kind are in an anomalous position, and one might be tempted to write them off,” writes George Orwell of the interwar British middle classes, “but the real importance of this class is that they are the shock-absorbers of the bourgeoisie.” As managers, technicians, experts, and consultants, the professional-managerial class (PMC) are not the owners of the means of production, but they don’t fit within the working class either, instead occupying a class position “between labor and capital.” The anxiety of liminality pervades discourse from and about the professional-managerial class, especially analysis on the Left. Writers who devote serious attention to the place of the PMC in class struggle are often PMC members themselves, and their analysis is often embroiled in a crisis of identity: if one defines the PM

The Pitfalls of Polemic, or How to Criticize the Crankiest Class of Critics A review of Catherine Liu’s Virtue Hoarders. Damage Magazine Jun 24, 2021 ∙ Paid Share A Review of Catherine Liu, Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021). Continue reading this post for free, courtesy of Damage Magazine. Claim my free post Or purchase a paid subscription.

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