Managers and Class

Depends on the manager I guess. (I wouldn't know, don't ask me about managerial shennangians)
IMO, managers and ceos and so on are proles.

Who isn't, then?

Most of the people who do most of the "heavy lifting" during the day of the rope get the upper positions, normally, and access to the best of everything to be shared…equally.

Friend, you could ask that about ninety-nine percent of the U.S. population, and you'd get ninety-nine and a half right answers.

There are many reasons bootlickers buy into capitalism: Perhaps they're desperate for power and influence, perhaps they believe it's what's expected of them by society, or perhaps they genuinely believe their company benefits the world at large.

Regardless, in my experience only the most classcucked of classcucks occupy the position of middle management.

Lol, what?

Happy new year baboons! We do not require baboons!

I became a socialist from working at Walmart well before I became a manager

O.
I've heard about what it's like to work there.

Have your economic views influenced your actions as a manager?

I don't let or encourage any of my people work off the clock and I always try to help them out the best I can when they look like they are struggling

That's very good.
Thanks, on behalf of the proleteriat.

Unless they own MoP they ain't bourgeois.
If I happen to be incorrect, please by all means educate me.

Whats it like working there? Did something happen to you?

It's a horrible place to work at that will overload you with work and then they get mad when you don't finish your 2 1/2 peoples worth of work and when I worked there I was an unloader unloading an entire semi trailer everyday for 7.85 an hour

Was the place understaffed, were you in a small town?

Im thinking if applying there, im out of other options.

We were always understaffed in the backroom and yes it was a small town store.

For Marx Lumpenproles are what he refers to as "functionaries of capital" i.e. they are paid because capital functions. Managers are in this sense unproductive labours since they don't produce anything but rather fill a political role of disciplining workers and representing the interest of capital in the workplace. There are managers which Marx would say are productive but managers who "orchestrate the labour process", this is a function required in all sorts of cooperative work within a division of labour.

Executives might be similar - a lot of work they do is peculiar to the capitalist mode of production fulfilling unproductive labour which would not be necessary in another mode of production. On the other hand they do take a hand in "orchestrating the labour process'.

managers?

Petite bourgeois would be your small business owners. Technically bourgeois but not even close to being "ruling class".

Lumpenprole (fuck this term) would be your drug addicts, prostitutes, gangsters, etc. People who exist outside of "polite society" more or less.

Managers are technically workers because their labor is exploited (managing the labor process is work), although managers tend to be "overpaid" compared to other workers (they're just underpaid less). Management does tend to get bloated in corporate structure though, to the point where their labor isn't really productive. This gets into issues of useless products and whatnot, but the more relevant topic is that managers serve a supportive role to the interests of capital. By having a layer of middle managers between your board/officers and your workforce, you create insulation from risk. When something goes bad - poor performance last quarter, legal trouble, etc. - the blame can be placed on an expendable middle manager. Business schools churn them out.

The closest term I can think to the managerial class would be "labor aristocrat" because they enjoy a higher standard of living than most workers, and their living is only possible because of the poorer workers laboring beneath them. It's not a very good fit though, especially given its connotations and usual use in the context of imperialism and the "there is no 1st world working class" meme.

In total, I would argue they were bureaucrats, and serve the interests of the bureaucracy first and foremost.
In the 1950s-70s this took the form of taking control of companies away from shareholders and centralizing it in themselves, running it in their own interests.
From the 80s to now, that has entailed protecting and expanding themselves with the tasks of monitoring and quantifying everything, even if it means the people they're managing become infinitely less efficient at their jobs, in pursuit of shareholder or government favour, as shareholders regained control.

Now here's a question. What of CEOs who take only average wage, and don't own shares (perhaps indeed the company doesn't issue shares.) as a hypothetical? i.e. someone with the same overall directive power over the company, but without the social status (or technical-MOP ownership via a 3% shareholding) ordinarily associated with the position. Do we consider them a wage labourer, bourgeoisie, or some "middle class"? How about the bureaucracy as a distinct class unto itself?

Technically speaking I guess they're selling their labor power, but 1. as soon as people have capital they usually invest it and get into financial speculation, and 2. they are obviously highly collaborating and deeply ideologically supportive of the statu quo and capitalism. Income aside, the closest to them is probably cops.

They're proletarian with a petite-bourgeois consciousness.

high wages

I wonder if lawyers count among this class? Sure there are some good ones but most buy into bourgeois legalism by default, and to a much greater degree than your average person.

Well, they don't own the MOP, but they certainly play a larger part in holding up the capitalist system than the average prole. The closest analogue would be the "bourgeois specialists" of early Soviet Union fame - count on them to collaborate with the bourgeois, and being likely to sabotage things.

Then who owns the MoP?

It has never been defined as wage-earning. Proletariat is the class that has no other option than wage-earning.

Managers don't own the MoP but CEOs sure do. They may not literally own them in the sense that they can't call the moving guys in and wheel out the 50 million dollar industrial lathe the factory floor relies on so they can pop it in their backyard, not without the rest of the board of directors throwing a revolt. Technically the company usually owns the MoP rather then the CEO personally, which only really matters if the CEO doesn't in turn fully own the company. But either way, the CEO makes decisions on the usage of the 50 million dollar industrial lathe and sets the course for the workers who have no say in the matter. They have control over the MoP and thus de facto ownership.

Not a huge fan of this line of thinking since it aligns too closely with the ancap "we live under socialism because government regulations force me to have a safety guard on my lathe, thus showing they exercise ownership/control instead of me." bizarreness.
Most CEOs own shares in the company they run, though.

Here's my pet theory.

When books like the Communist Manifesto and ABC of Communism came out they predicted workers would inevitably rise and overthrow their bosses. Perhaps peacefully, perhaps with a bullet.
Capitalists porkies read these works and saw the possibility of such an outcome, so they thought of ways to prevent it. One preventative measure was relentless red scare propaganda.
Another was the invention of middle management.
Managers promoted from "the factory floor" to be given twice the stress for a quarter more pay. This had the two-fold effect of making it more difficult to rise-up if you boss was once one of you're own. And upward mobility holds out a carrot to encourage subservient workers.

They're turn-coats from the working class, to put it harshly. Or they're working class trying to get the most from a rotten system, if you're kind.

youtube.com/watch?v=SiIo64BCIjk
listen to this

It's not that cut and dry. Listen to comrade Engels:
Although CEO's get a wage, they also own large parts in stock of the company they are on the board of. They could live just fine off of there investment returns, they are not bound to wage labor like a proletarian is. CEO's certainly 'life and death' does not depend solely on their wage labor.

They are part of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie extracts profit from the labour of the proletariat and then distributes said profits between themselves. How they distribute the profits, what part of it goes to the bankers the company is indebted to, the landlord who owns the land they utilize, the CEO, and what part of the profits is retained by the firm owner(s) matters little.
To the retard who said they are part of the lumpenproletariat: the lumpenproletariat consists of people who are outside the productive process, and are thus neither part of the (petite) bourgeoisie nor the proletariat (including the reserve labour army). These are the prostitutes, junkies, thieves, permanently unemployable, those unfit for work, gang members, beggars etc.

Managers are metaphorical whores though.