Rise and Fall of the Professional Managerial Class

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DEATH OF A YUPPIE DREAMThe Rise and Fall of the Professional-Managerial Clas

ByBarbara Ehrenreich and John EhrenreichROSA

LUXEMBURG

STIFTUNG

NEW YORK OFFICE


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Table of Contents

Class Analysis for the 21st

Century. By the Editors........................................................................1

Death of a Yuppie Dream

The Rise and Fall of the Professional-Managerial Class.........................................................2

By Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich

The Emergence of a New Class...................................................................................................3

Between Labor and Capital.......................................................................................................4

The Capitalist Oensive..............................................................................................................6

Technological Change and the PMC.......................................................................................7

The Crisis of the Liberal Professions........................................................................................8

The Legacy of the Professional Managerial Class.....................................................................9

Background Notes: The Recent History of the Professional-Managerial Class

www.rosalux-nyc.org/backgroundnotes1

PublishedbytheRosaLuxemburgStiftung,NewYorkOce,February2013

Editors: Stefanie Ehmsen and Albert ScharenbergAddress: 275MadisonAvenue,Suite2114,NewYork,NY10016Email: [email protected]; Phone:+1(917)409-1040

TheRosaLuxemburgFoundationisaninternationallyoperating,progressivenon-protinstitutionfor

civiceducation.Incooperationwithmanyorganizationsaroundtheglobe,itworksondemocraticand

social participation,empowermentof disadvantagedgroups, alternatives foreconomic, andsocial

development,andpeacefulconictresolution.

TheNewYorkOceservestwomajortasks:to workaroundissuesconcerningtheUnitedNations

andtoengageindialoguewithNorthAmericanprogressivesinuniversities,unions,socialmovements

and politics.

www.rosalux-nyc.org


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1

Class Analysis for the 21st Century

Saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, unemployed or working part-time for not muchmore than minimum wage: the struggling recent college graduate hasthanks to Occupy Wall

Streetbecome anew iconicgureonthe Americanculturallandscape.Tomanyit seemsthat an

implicit promise has been broken: work hard, get an education and you will ascend to the middle class.

MiddleclassisafamouslyexibletermintheUnitedStates,buthereitseemstomeansomething

closetowhatBarbaraEhrenreichandJohnEhrenreichrstlabeledtheprofessional-managerialclass

(PMC) in 1977. This class of college-educated professionals is distinct fromand often at odds with

both the traditional working class and the old middle class of small business owners, not to men-

tionwealthybusinessowners.Organizedintolargelyautonomousprofessionsdenedbyspecialized

knowledgeandethicalstandards,membersofthePMCattimesfromtheProgressiveEratotheNew

Leftwereinstrumentalinmobilizingforprogressivecauses.

Today, the PMC as a distinct class seems to be endangered. At the top end, exorbitant compensation

andbonuseshave turned managersinto corporate owners. At the bottom, journalists havebeen

laido,recentPhDshavegone towork aspart-time,temporaryadjuncts ratherthan tenure-track

professors,andthosenowiconicrecentgraduateshavetakentothestreets.Inthemiddle,lawyers

anddoctorsaremoreandmorelikelytoworkforcorporationsratherthaninprivatepractices.Once

independent professionals, they are now employees.

Inthisstudy,BarbaraEhrenreichandJohnEhrenreichdeployanall-too-rareexampleofclassanalysis

astheyrevisittheconceptoftheprofessional-managerialclass.Againstthebackgroundofthisnew

classhistoricalevolutionsincethelate19 thcenturyanditsriseinthe20th, the authors focus on the

morerecentdevelopmentofthePMC.Inthe1970s,thisclassseemedascendant.Anincreasingper-

centageoftheworkforceheldprofessionaljobs,andmanymembersofthePMChadfoundadistinct

politicalvoiceintheNewLeft.Since1980,however,thingshavelookedlessrosy.Ascapitalattacked

the autonomy of the liberal professions, the rightwing media tapped into working-class resentment

oftheliberalelite.Morerecently,whilecollegeeducatedworkers,despitetheimpactoftheGreat

Recession,havecontinuedtodorelativelywellasademographiccategory,thePMCasaclasscapable

ofactinginitsowninterestseemstobeanincreasinglyirrelevantproductofthe20th century.

Historically,members of thePMC havedesigned andmanaged capitalssystems of social control,

oftentimestreatingworking-classpeoplewithamixtureofpaternalismandhostility.Asadvocatesfor

rationalmanagementoftheworkplaceandsociety,however,thePMChassometimesalsoactedasa

bueragainsttheprotmotiveasthesolemeaningfulforceinsociety.Today,membersofthePMC

face a choice. Will they cling to an elitist conception of their own superiority and attempt to defendtheirownincreasinglytenuousprivileges,orwilltheyactinsolidaritywithotherworkingpeopleand

help craft a politics capable of creating a better world for all?

Stefanie Ehmsen and Albert Scharenberg

Co-Directors of New York Oce, February 2012


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2

Every would-be populist in American politics

purportstodefendthemiddleclass,although

there is no agreement on what it is. Just in the

lastcoupleofyears,themiddleclasshasvar -

iously been dened as everybody, everybody

minusthefteenpercentlivingbelowtheFed-

eralpovertylevel,oreverybodyminustheveryrichest Americans. Mitt Romney famously ex-

cludedthoseinthelowendbutincludedhim-

self(2010income$21.6million)alongwith80

to90percentofAmericans.PresidentObamas

eorttoextendtheBush-eramiddleclasstax

cutexcludesonlythoseearningover$250,000

a year, while Occupy Wall Street excluded only

the richest one per cent. The Department of

Commerce has given up on income-based

denitions, announcing in a 2010 report that

middleclassfamiliesaredenedbytheiras -

pirations more than their income [...]. Middleclass families aspire to home ownership, a car,

college education for their children, health and

retirementsecurityandoccasionalfamilyvaca-

tionswhichexcludesalmostnoone.1

Class itself is a muddled concept, perhaps es-

pecially in America, where any allusion to the

dierentinterestsofdierentoccupationaland

income groups is likely to attract the charge of

classwarfare.Everyoneintuitivelyrecognizes

variousdistinctionsevenwithinthevaguemid-

dle class of political discourse, but we have

hardly any way of talking about them. Sociol-

ogists slice the class spectrum in many, seem-

1 Romney is quoted by, among others, CBS News, Sep-

tember21,2011,www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-

20109658-503544.html.TheDepartmentofCommerce

report, Middle Class in America,January2010.

ingly arbitrary, dierent ways, while those in

the Marxist tradition insist that a group is not

aclassunlessithasdevelopedsomesenseof

collectiveself-interest,asdid,forexample,the

industrial working class of the late 19th through

the late 20th centuries. If classrequires some

sortofconsciousness,orcapacityforconcert-edaction,thenamiddleclassconceivedofas

a sort of default classwhat you are left with

after you subtract the rich and the pooris not

veryinteresting.

But there is another, potentially more produc-

tive,interpretationofwhathasbeengoingon

inthemid-incomerange.In1977,werstpro -

posed the existence of a professional-man-

agerialclass,distinctfromboththeworking

class, from the old middle class of small

business owners, as well as from the wealthyclass of owners.2ThenotionofthePMCwas

aneorttoexplain(1)thelargelymiddleclass

roots of the New Left in the sixties and (2) the

tensions that were emerging between that

groupandtheoldworkingclassintheseven -

ties, culminating in the political backlash that

led to the election of Reagan. The right em-

braced a caricature of this notion of a new

class,proposingthatcollege-educatedprofes-

sionalsespecially lawyers, professors, jour-

nalists, and artistsmake up a power-hungry

2 Barbara and John Ehrenreich, The Professional-Man-

agerial Class, Radical America 11 (2), March-April 1977,

pp. 7-31, and reprinted, together with a number of

commentaries, in Pat Walker, Between Labor and Capital.

South End Press: Boston, 1979. Many of the themes of

the original article were further elaborated in Barbara

Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle

Class. Pantheon: New York, 1989.

Death of a Yuppie Dream

The Rise and Fall of the Professional-Managerial Class

By Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich


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EHRENREICH & EHRENREICH

DEATH OF A YUPPIE DREAM

3

liberal elite bent on imposing itsversion of

socialismoneveryoneelse.

Butmuchhaschangedsincewesurveyedthe

Americanclasslandscapeoverthirtyyearsago.

Job opportunities for the supposedly liberal

professions, which were expanding in the six-

ties, have in some cases, such as journalism,

undergoneadevastatingdecline.Otherprofes-

sionaljobshavebeenseverelydowngraded,as

illustrated by the replacement of tenure-track

professors with low-wage adjuncts. Yet oth-

ers (doctors and other health workers, lawyers)

have been absorbed into large corporations

or corporation-like enterprises. On the mana-

gerial side of the class, college-educated pro-

fessionals seemto have beenfully integrated

into their corporate enterprisesto the point

where stock options have eectively trans-

formedmiddle-andupper-levelexecutivesinto

owners.

Inthissetting,wehavetoaskwhethertheno-

tionofaprofessional-managerialclass,withits

own distinct aspirations and class interests, still

makesanysense,ifitdidintherstplace.Does

thePMChaveanyideologicalorsocialcoheren-

cy?Canitstillmuster,asitdidatvarioustimes

in the 20th century, some notion of a political

mission?

The Emergence of a New Class

There was little need for a class of profession-

als when modern capitalism emerged in the

IndustrialRevolutionofthelateeighteenthand

early nineteenthcentury.Inthe simplestcase,

theownerraisedthefundstonancetheenter -

prise and directed the production process (and

in many early cases, had himself contributed to

thedesignanddevelopmentofthemachinery

ofproduction).Hewassimultaneouslynancer,

owner, chief engineer, and chief manager.

By the end of the nineteenth century, as capital-

ist enterprises grew, this do-it-yourself business

model was increasingly obsolete. The growing

sizeofcapitalistenterprisesrequiredmorecap -

italthananindividualcouldsupply,morevaried

and complex technology than a single person

could master, more complex management than

oneorafewownerscouldprovide,morestabil -ity in labor relations than police and hired thugs

could oer, and ultimately more stability in

marketsthanchancealonewouldprovide.But

it was also increasingly possible to meet these

needs because the new concentration and cen-

tralizationofcapitalmeantthatbusinessown -

erscouldaordtohireexpertstodothework

of management, long-term planning, and ratio-

nalizingtheproductionprocess.

By the early 1900s American capitalism had

also come to depend on the development of

anationalconsumergoodsmarket.Items,like

clothing, which previously hadbeenproduced

at home, were replaced by the uniform prod-

ucts of mass production. The management of

consumption came to be as important as the

management of production and required the

eortsoflegionsoftrainedpeopleinadditionto

engineers and managers: school teachers, pro-

fessors, journalists, entertainers, social work-

ers,doctors,lawyers,admen,domesticscien -

tists, experts in child rearing and romance

and practically all other aspects of daily life, etc.

Bythe20th century, social theorists were begin-

ningtonotetheemergenceofanewmiddleclassornewworkingclasscomposedofpro-

fessional and managerial workerswhat we

latercalledtheProfessional-ManagerialClass

(PMC).

The PMC grew rapidly. From 1870 to 1910

alone, while the whole population of the


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United States increased two and one third

times and the old middle class of business

entrepreneurs and independent professionals

doubled, the number of people in what could

be seen as PMC jobs grew almost eight fold.

And in the years that followed, that growth

onlyaccelerated.Althoughavarietyofpractical

and theoretical obstacles prevent making any

preciseanalysis,weestimatethataslateas1930,

people in PMC occupations still made up less

than 1% of total employment. By 1972, about

24%ofAmericanjobswereinPMCoccupations.

By 1983 the number had risen to 28% and by

2006,justbeforetheGreatRecession,to35%.3

3 Precisegures andaccuratecomparisonsarehard to

comebyforseveralreasons:TheBureauofLaborStatis -

ticsdenitionsandgroupingsofoccupations,methods

ofgatheringdata,etc.havechangedseveraltimesover

theyears,anddeningsocialclassdistributionpurelybyoccupational distribution is both theoretically problem-

aticandconfoundedbyfactorssuchashavingfamilies

with two wage earners, with sometimes only one, some-

times both inPMC occupations. Dataaboveare from

H.D.AndersonandP.E.Davidson, Occupational Trends in

the United States (Stanford,1940);U.S.BureauofCensus,

Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial times to

1957;andU.S.BureauofCensus,Statistical Abstract of

the United States, 1973, 1981, 2001, and 2008.

Between Labor and Capital

The relationship between the emerging PMC

and the traditional working class was, from the

start,rivenwithtensions.Itwastheoccupation -

al role of managers and engineers, along with

many other professionals, to manage, regulate,

and control the life of the working class. They de-

signedthedivisionoflaborandthemachinesthat

controlled workers minute by minute existence

on the factory oor, manipulated their desire

forcommodities andtheiropinions, socialized

theirchildren,andevenmediatedtheirrelation -

ship with their own bodies.4 As experienced day

to day, contacts between teacher and student,

manager and worker, social worker and client,

etc. featured a complex mixture of deference

and hostility on the part of working class people

and paternalism and contempt on the part of the

PMC.

At the same time though, the role of the PMC

asrationalizersofsocietyoftenplacedthem

in direct conict with the capitalist class. Like

theworkers,thePMCwerethemselvesemploy-

ees and subordinate to the owners, but since

whatwastrulyrationalintheproductivepro -

4 See, interalia, HarryBraverman,Labor and Monopoly

Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century.

MonthlyReviewPress:NewYork,1974;JohnEhrenreich

(Ed.), The Cultural Crisis of Modern Medicine. Monthly Re-

viewPress:NewYork,1978;SamuelBowlesandHerbert

Gintis,Schooling in Capitalist America. Basic Books: New

York, 1977; and Stewart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness:

Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture.

McGrawHill:NewYork,1976.

cess was not always identical to what was most

immediately protable, the PMC often sought

autonomy and freedom from their own boss-

es.Avigorouscritiqueofunbridledcapitalism

developedwithin theearly 20thcentury PMC,

withsomeProgressiveerathinkers,likeVeblen,

proposing that theirs was the only social group

capable of impartial leadership, based on sci-

ence rather than on any narrow class interest.

EdwardA.Ross,aProgressiveideologuewhois

also considered the founder of American sociol-

ogy,arguedin1907that

Social defense is coming to be a matter for the ex-

pert. The rearing of dykes against faithlessness and

fraud calls for intelligent social engineering. If in

this strait the public does not speedily become far

shrewder there is nothing for it but to turn over

the defense of society to professionals.

Inits own defense,but with considerable en-

couragement from the capitalist class, the PMC

organizeditself intoprofessions. The Carnegie


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5

Foundation,basedonsteelmoney,fundedthe

reports that launched the medical, legal, and

engineering professions in the early 20th cen-

tury; railroad and banking money underwrote

thedevelopmentofthesocialworkprofession.

Statelicensingboardsdenedthenewprofes -

sions and limited practitioners to those who (a)

professed to uphold a set of ethical standards

and (b) could demonstrate that they had mas-

tered a specialized body of knowledge, acces-

sible only through lengthy training. The claim

to specialized knowledge now seems obvious

and necessary, but at the time the emerg-

ing professions had little such knowledge to

call theirown.Eventoday, it isnot clearwhy

a lawyer needs a liberal arts education or apre-med student needs to master calculus.

Advertised as reforms, such requirements

largelyservetolimitaccessto theprofessions

aswell asto justify a broadclaim toautono-

my from outside interference in the practice

of the professionparticularly from business

interests.

Bythemid-twentiethcentury,jobsforthePMC

were proliferating. Public education was ex-

panding,themodernuniversitycameintobe-

ing, local governments expanded in size androle, charitable agencies merged, newspaper

circulation soared, traditional forms of recre-

ationgavewaytothepopularcultureanden-

tertainment (and sports) industries, etc.and

allofthesedevelopmentscreatedjobsforhigh -

lyeducatedprofessionals,includingjournalists,

social workers, professors, doctors, lawyers,

and entertainers (artists and writers among

others).

Some of these occupations managed to retain

a measure of autonomy and, with it, the pos-

sibility of opposition to business domination.

Theso-called liberal professions,particularly

medicine and law, remained largely outside the

corporate framework until well past the middle

ofthe20th century. Most doctors, many nurses,

andthemajorityoflawyersworkedinindepen-

dent(private)practices.Inthe caseof doctors,

as late as 1940, there was still little medical

technologyinuseandnosignicanteconomies

ofscalewerepossible.Evenmuchprofession-

al nursing could be done outside the hospital

by nurses who were self-employed or who

worked for small, local agencies. Some lawyers

did work directly for corporations or in large

lawrmsservingcorporations,butthemajority

remainedinlocal,solopracticesservingnearby

smallbusinessesandindividualsandusinglittle

technology.

Other professionals, such as teachers, profes-

sors, and social workers, were employed in the

not-for-protorgovernmentalsectorswheretherewaslittleincentiveforcorporationstoin-

trude.Universities,forexample,werestillrela -

tivelysmallandelite.(Intheearly1930s,only

about a million students were enrolled in col-

leges and universities nationwideabout ten

percentofthecollegeagedpopulation).Many

of these universities could trace their origins

to churches and other non-prot groups and

remained in the not-for-prot sector; others

(thelandgrantuniversities)wereinthepublic

sector. Educational work was highly labor inten-

sive,andtherewasnoobviousway,atthetime,to automate or streamline student-teacher in-

teraction and make universities a protable

undertaking. Social Service agencies, which

employed a third of a million or so social work-

ersandtherapists,wereevenlesstemptingto

entrepreneurs and corporations because their

services, which were mainly directed at the

poor,oerednoopportunityforprot.Soso-

cial workers were left pretty much left to run

their own agencies.

The most historically fractious group within thePMCthecreativeprofessions,includingjour -

nalists and editors, artists, musicians, and archi-

tects5also retained a considerable autonomy

5 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Detailed Occupation of the Eco-

nomically Active Population, 1900-1970.


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wellintothelate20th century. Although many

ofthesewereemployedbyfor-protcorpora-

tions(e.g.,newspapers,bookpublishers,mov -

ie studios, and ad agencies), a substantial and

very visible minority remained self-employed.

Insofarastheiroccupationalrolewastopush

theboundariesofmassconsumerculture,even

top corporate management often recognized

and tolerated their eccentricities, at least to an

extent.

Inthe 1960s, for the rst time sincethe Pro-

gressiveEra,alargesegmentofthePMChad

the self-condence to take on a critical, even

oppositional, political role. Jobs were plentiful,

a college education did not yet lead to a lifetime

ofdebt,andmaterialismwasbrieyoutofstyle.

Beginning in theseventies, the capitalist class

decisively re-asserted itself, which is to say

thatmanyindividualswithinitorimmediately

beholden to it began to raise the alarm: Prof-

its rates were falling, and foreign competition

was rising in key industries like auto and steel.

College students and urban blacks, inspired by

thirdworldnationalistmovements,weretalking

openlyaboutrevolution;thetraditionalwork-

ingclasswasengagedinthemostintensewave

of strikes and work actions since the 1940s.

Business leaders who could see beyond the

connesoftheirownenterprisesdeclaredthat

capitalism itselfor, in more, attractive, liber-

tarian-sounding terms, free enterprisewas

under attack.

The ensuing capitalist oensive was so geo-

graphically widespread and thoroughgoing

that it introduced what many leftwing theorists

today describe as a new form of capitalism,

neoliberalism.ThatcherintheU.K.,Pinochet

inChile,andReaganintheUnitedStatesallup-

The Capitalist Oensive

held the ideal of unfettered and expanded free

enterprise: reductions in the welfare state, the

deregulation of business, the privatization of

formerlypublicfunctions,freetrade,andthe

eliminationofunions.WithintheUnitedStates,

eliteorganizationsliketheBusinessRoundtable

sprang up to promote pro-business public pol-

icies, assisted by a growing number of founda-

tionsandthinktanksprovidinganintellectual

undergirding for neoliberal ideology.7

At the level of the individual corporation, the

newmanagementstrategywastoraiseprots

by single-mindedly reducing labor costs, most

directly by simply moving manufacturing o-

shoretondcheaperlabor.ThoseworkerswhoremainedemployedintheUnitedStatesfaced

7 DavidHarvey,A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford

UniversityPress:Oxford/UK,2005.

College students quickly moved on fromsup-

portingthecivilrightsmovementintheSouth

andopposingthewarinVietnamtoconfront-

ing the raw fact of corporate power throughout

American societyfrom the pro-war inclina-

tions of the weapons industry to the gover-

nanceoftheuniversity.6Therevoltsoonspread

beyond students. By the end of the sixties, al-

mostalloftheliberalprofessionshadradical

caucuses, demanding thataccess to the pro-

fessions be opened up to those traditionally

excluded (such as women and minorities), and

thattheserviceethicstheprofessionsclaimed

to uphold actually be applied in practice. The

rstEarthDay,stagedin1970,openedupa

new front in the attack on corporate dominationand priorities.

6 Amoredetaileddiscussionoftherelationshipbetween

thePMCandthemovementsofthesixtiescanbefound

inBarbaraandJohnEhrenreich,TheNewLeft:ACase

StudyinProfessional-ManagerialClassRadicalism. Rad-

ical America 11 (3), May-June 1977, pp. 7-22.


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aseriesofinitiativesdesignedtodisciplineand

controlthemevermoretightly:intensiedsu-

pervisionintheworkplace,drugteststoelimi-

nateslackers,andincreasinglyprofessionalized

eortstopreventunionization.Cutsinthewel-

fare state also had a disciplining function, mak-

ingit harder forworkersto imaginesurviving

jobloss.

Most of these anti-labor measures also had

aneect,directlyorindirectly,onelementsof

thePMC. Government spendingcuts hurt the

job prospectsof social workers,teachers,and

others in the helping professions, while the

decimation of the U.S.-based industrial work-

ing classreducedthe need for mid-level pro-

fessional managers, who found themselves

increasinglytargetedfordownsizing.Butthere

was a special animus against the liberal pro-

fessions, surpassed only by neoliberal hostility

to what conservatives described as the un-

derclass. The awakening capitalist class had

begun to nurture its own intelligentsia, based

in the new think tanks and the proliferating

rightwing media, and it was they who promot-

ed the ostensibly populist idea of a liberal

elite.Crushingthisliberalelitebydefunding

the left or attacking liberal-leaning nonprof-

it organizationsbecame a major neoliberal

project.

Technological Change and the Professional-Managerial Class

Of course, not all the forces undermining the

liberal professions since the 1980s can be

traced to conscious neoliberal policies. Tech-

nological innovation, rising demand for ser-

vices, and ruthless prot-taking all contribut-

edto anincreasingly challengingenvironment

for the liberal professions, including the cre-

ative ones.8 In medicine, new technologies

such as magnetic resonance imaging, which

were too expensive for solo practitioners,

pulled physicians into employment by hos-

pitals and group practices that were them-

selves often owned by hospitals. By 2010,9

more than half of practicing U.S. physicians

were directly employed by hospitals or by inte-

grateddeliverysystems,comparedtothe24%

8 Foradetaileddiscussionandexplanationofthetrans-

formation of the lot of health care professionals, law-yers, journalists, writers, editors, and the like, see

JohnEhrenreichand BarbaraEhrenreich, Background

Notes: The Recent History of the Professional Manageri-

alClass,www.rosalux-nyc.org/backgroundnotes1.

9 GardinerHarris,MoreDoctorsGivingUpPrivatePrac-

tices,The New York Times,March25,2010;RobertKoch-

erandNikhilR.Sahni,HospitalsRacetoEmployPhysi-

ciansTheLogic Behinda Money-Losing Proposition,

The New England Journal of Medicine,May12,2011.

of doctors who were salaried employees in

1983.10

There was a similar change in the legal pro-

fession. Driven largely by a dramatically in-

creased demand for legal services, large

evenmegarmsreplacedprivatepractices.

Around1960,therewerefewerthanfortylaw

rmsemployingasmanyasftyormorelaw-

yers; today there are many hundreds, twen-

ty-one of which employ more than one thou-

sand lawyers each.11 Currently 42% of all prac-

ticing lawyers work in one ofthe biggest 250

rmsorinotherinstitutionalsettings(corpora-

tions,government,orthenot-for-protsector).

The sheer size of hi-tech hospitals and mega

law rms seemed to require increasingly bu-reaucratic forms of organization. Hospitals

hired professional managers to take a role once

10 P.R. Kletkeet al,1994,1996,citedinJohnB. McKinlay

andLisaD.Marceau(2002),TheEndoftheGoldenAge

ofDoctoring.International Journal of Health Services 32

(2),379-416.

11 Americas Largest 250 Law Firms.InternetLegalResearch

Group.www.ilrg.com/nlj250/attorneys/desc/1.


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8

played bydoctors; law rms came under the

swayofseniorpartnersspecializinginmanage-

ment.Universities,whichhadbeenundergoing

aparallelgrowthspurtsincethe1960s,began

to depend on the leadership of business school

graduates. As a result the work experience of

theliberalprofessionshasbeencomingtore-

semble that of engineers, managers, and others

inthebusinessserviceprofessionsmorelike

a cog in a machine and less like an autonomous

practitioner. The pressure in all of these insti-

tutionsprot-makingandnonprotistocut

costsand drive upsales, whether theseare

measuredinbillablehours,classsize,orthe

number of procedures performed.

The Internetis oftenblamed for the plight of

journalists,writers, and editors, but economic

change preceded technological transformation.

Inthe1990sawaveofcorporateconsolidation

andaggressiveprot-takingsweptthroughthe

corporations that produce newspapers and

books. Journalism jobsbegan to disappearas

corporations, responding in part to Wall Street

investors, tried to squeeze higher prot mar-

ginsoutofnewspapersandTVnewsprograms.

Editorsat papers across the countrybecame

increasingly frustrated that editorial decisions

were being made not in order to keep the pa-

persaoat,buttopropelprotlevelseverhigh -

er.12 Mergers simultaneously transformed the

book publishing industry, as new corporate

managers, whether from Bertelsmann or Vi-

acom or News Corp, pressed for higher rates

of return, meaning blockbusters rather than

works of literature or scholarship.

Theeectsofthesechangesonthetradition -

allycreativeprofessions havebeen dire.Sta

writers, editors, photographers, announcers,

andthe likefacedmassivelayos(more than

25% of newsroomsta alone since2001), in-

creased workloads, salary cuts, and buy-outs.

Authors had to make do with diminishing ad-

vances; freelance writers, artists, and pho-

tographers found themselves in straitened

circumstances well before the recession. And

while the Internet provides new outlets for

the creators of content, it oers little or no

compensation.

12 FederalCommunicationsCommission(n.d.).TheMedia

Landscape. http://transition.fcc.gov/osp/inc-report/IN-

oC-1-Newspapers.pdf.

The Crisis of the Liberal Professions

Then,injustthelastdozenyears,thePMCbe-

gantosuerthefateoftheindustrialclassin

the 1980s: replacement by cheap foreign la-

bor.13 Earlier, business analysts had promised a

newglobaldivisionoflaborinwhichthethird

worldwouldprovidethehandsformanufac-

turing whilethe U.S.and other wealthy coun-

13 Although good statistics on the outsourcing of profes-

sionaljobsarehardtond,someeconomistsestimated

thatby2010morethantwothirdsofamillionprofes-

sionaljobs,previouslydoneintheU.S.,wouldbedone

abroad. These ranged from reading x-rays to transcrib-

inglegal depositions to graphicdesign. For more de-

tailed discussion and sources, see John Ehrenreich and

Barbara Ehrenreich, Background Notes: The Recent

HistoryoftheProfessional-ManagerialClass,op.cit.

tries would continue to provide the brains.

So it came as a shock to many when, in the

2000s, businesses began to avail themselves

of new high speed transmission technologies

to outsource professional functions. Hospitals

sentagrowingvarietyoftaskssuchasread-

ing x-rays, MRIs and echocardiogramsto be

performed by lower paid physicians in India.Law rms outsourced document review, re-

viewoflitigationemails,andlegalresearchto

English-speakers abroad. The publishing indus-

try sent out editing, graphic design, andfor


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9

textbooksevenpartsofcontentcreation.Cor-

porations undercut U.S.-based engineers and

computer professionals by outsourcing product

designanddevelopment.

Bythetimeofthenancialmeltdownanddeep

recessionofthepost-2008period,thepainin-

icted by neoliberal policies, both public and

corporate, extended well beyond the old in-

dustrial working class and into core segments

ofthePMC.Unemployedandunderemployed

professional workersfrom IT to journalism,

academia, andeventually lawbecame a reg-

ular feature of the social landscape. Young

peopledidnotlosefaithinthevalueofaned-

ucation, but they learned quickly that it makesmoresensetostudynanceratherthanphys -

icsorcommunicationsratherthanliterature.

The old PMC dream of a society rule by impar-

tialexpertsgavewaytotherealityofinescap-

able corporate domination.

ButthePMCwasnotonlyavictimofmorepow -

erfulgroups.Ithadalsofallenintoatrapofits

own making. The prolonged, expensive, and

specialized educationrequiredfor profession-

al employment had always been a challenge

to PMC familiesas well, of course, as an of-ten insuperable barrier to the working class.

IfthechildrenofthePMCweretoachievethe

same class status as their parents, they had

to be accustomed to obedience in the class-

room and long hours of study. They had to be

disciplined students while, ideally, remaining

capable of critical and creative thinking. Thus

thereproductionoftheclassrequireda con-

siderable parental (usually maternal) invest-

mentencouraging good study habits, helping

with homework, arranging tutoring (and SAT

preparation), and stimulating curiosity about

academicallyapprovedsubjects.

Upuntilthesixties,atleast,thePMCwasgen-

erally successful in reproducing itself. Access to

collegewasgrowing,tuitionswerestillrelative-

ly low. Then the cost of college skyrocketed. To

take one example, tuition at the publicly fund-

edUniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley,rosefrom

about$700ayearbackinthe1970stomore

than$13,000peryearnow,arateofincrease

fargreaterthanthatinthecostoflivinggener-

ally and certainly greater than salaries. (Tuition

is,ofcourse,far higherat privateinstitutions).

Consumer prices as a whole have increased

115%since1986,butduringthesametime,col -

lege tuition increased 498%.14 Part of the rise,

especiallyinthelargeruniversities,isdirectlyat -

tributabletothecorporatizationoftheuniversi-

tyits proliferating layers of administration, the

growth of its real estate holdings, and its aggres-

siveeortstocourtstarprofessorsandpaying

students. As tuition rose, parents from the PMCoftenfoundthemselvestoorichfortheirchil-

dren to qualify for needs-based scholarships

but too poor to pay for their childrens education

themselves.

The solution, of course, was to have the stu-

dent him or herself rely on loans, backed by

the federal government. Today the average

undergraduate student graduates with some

$25,000 in outstanding debts and little likeli-

hoodofndingagoodjob.Bylate2011,aggre-

gate student loan debt was greater than eitheraggregate car loan debt or aggregate credit

card debt.15 Graduatestudentsareevenworse

o.Forexample,themediantuitionatprivate

law schoolsrose from$7,385 in1985to over

$36,000in2011,andthemediandebt16 of recent

14 Gordon H. Wadsworth, Sky Rocketing CollegeCosts,

InationData.com ,June14,2012;DonnaM.Desrochers

andJaneV. Wellman, Trends in College Spending 1999-

2009 (DeltaCostProject2011);NationalCenterforEdu-

cation Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics,2010,Table

345. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt

10_345.asp?referrer=report.

15 TheProjectonStudentDebt.Student Debt and the Classof 2010. November2011. http://projectonstudentdebt.

org/les/pub/classof2010.pdf;MetaBrown,etal.,Grad -

ingStudent Loans, Federal Reserve Bank of New York,

March5,2012.

16 American Bar Association. Law School Tuition, 1985-2009.

www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/le-

galed/statistics/charts/stats_5.authcheckdam.pdf; Law

School Admissions Council, Financing Law School, www.

lsac.org/jd/nance/nancial-aid-repayment.asp.


12/16



10

graduates isover$100,000;althoughonly30-

35% of recent law school graduates are actual-

ly nding permanent, full-time jobs requiring

a law degree. Higher degrees and licenses are

no longer a guaranty of PMC status. Hence the

iconic gureof the Occupy Wall Street move-

ment: the college graduate with tens of thou-

sands of dollars in student loan debts and

a job paying about $10 a hour, or no job at

all.

College-educatedworkerscontinuetothriveas

a demographic category. But a demographic

category is not a class.Decadesagothecollege

educated population and the PMC were almost

co-extensive.Butnowacollegeeducationhasbecome the new norm, with employers in a

growing number of occupations favoring de-

gree-holders not so much because of any spe-

cialized knowledge or skills they possess, but

becausetheyhavedemonstratedthediscipline

to get through college. They can follow instruc-

tionsandmeetdeadlines;theyhavemastered

a bureaucratic mode of communication. At

most, only half to two thirds of the increase

inBAandMAdegreessince197017 appears to

represent any increased need for training for

people in occupations such as medicine, law,

social work, or computer and information sci-

ences that indisputably require postsecondary

education. Today a motel manager, for exam-

ple, needs a degree in hotel and restaurant

management,eventhoughhotelsandmotels

havebeen managedperfectly wellfor several

thousandyearswithoutprofessionaltraining.

So in the hundred years since its emergence,

the PMC has not managed to hold its own as

17 BasedonguresinNationalCenterforEducationStatis-

tics, Digest of Education Statistics, 2010, Table 282, http://

nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_282.as -

p?referrer=list.Whiletheexpansionofcollegeanduni-

versityenrollmentisinsignicantmeasureduetothe

needforamorehighlytrainedworkforce,asignicant

part seems to be associated more with the historical

prestige of the college degree itself and with the lack of

availabilityofjobs.

a class. At its wealthier end, skilled profession-

als continue to jump ship for more lucrative

postsindirectservicetocapital:Scientistsgive

uptheirresearchtobecomequantsonWall

Street;18 physicians can double their incomesbyndingworkasinvestmentanalystsforthe

nance industry or by setting up concierge

practicesservingthewealthy.Atthelessfortu -

nateendofthespectrum,journalistsandPhDs

in sociology or literature spiral down into the

retail workforce. In between, health workers

andlawyersandprofessorsndtheirworklives

more and more hemmed in and regulated by

corporation-like enterprises. The center has not

held.Conceivedasthemiddleclassandasthe

supposedrepositoryofcivicvirtueandoccupa-

tional dedication, the PMC lies in ruins.

More profoundly, the PMCs original dreamof

a society ruled by reason and led by public-spir-

itedprofessionalshasbeendiscredited.Glob-

ally, the socialist societies that seemed to come

closest to this goal either degenerated into

heavily militarized dictatorships or, more re-

cently, into authoritarian capitalist states. With-

intheUS,thegrotesquefailureofsocialismin

Chinaand the SovietUnion became a propa-

ganda weapon in the neoliberal war against the

public sector in its most innocuous forms and a

coreargumentfortheprivatizationofjustabout

everything.ButthePMChasalsomanagedto

discredititselfasanadvocateforthecommon

18 Vgl. ScottPatterson,The Quants: How a New Breed of

Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed

It, NewYork2010.

The Legacy of the Professional-Managerial Class


13/16



11

good. Consider our gleaming towers of medical

research and high-technology careall too of-

ten abutting urban neighborhoods character-

izedbyextremepovertyandforeshortenedlife

spans.

ShouldwemournthefateofthePMCorrejoice

that there is one less smug, self-styled, elite to

stand in the way of a more egalitarian future? A

case has been made here for both responses.

On the one hand, the PMC hasplayedamajor

role in the oppression and disempowering of

theoldworkingclass.Ithasoeredlittleresis -

tance to (and, in fact, supplied the manpower

for) the rights campaign against any measure

thatmighteasethelivesofthepoorandtheworking class.

On the other hand, the PMC has at times been

aliberalforce,defendingthevaluesofschol -

arship and human service in the face of the

relentless pursuit of prot. In thisrespect, its

role in the last century bears some analogy to

the role of monasteries in medieval Europe,

which kept literacy and at least some form of

inquiry alive while the barbarians raged out-

side. As we face the deepening ruin brought

on by neoliberal aggression, the question maybe: Who, among the survivors, will uphold

those values today? And, more profoundly,

isthereanywaytosalvagethedreamofrea -

sonor at least the idea of a society in which

reasonablenesscanoccasionallyprevailfrom

the accretion of elitism it acquired from the

PMC?

Any renewal of oppositional spirit among

the Professional-Managerial Class, or what

remains of it, needs to start from an aware-

ness that what has happened to the profes-

sional middle class has long since happened to

the blue collar working class. Those of us who

havecollegeand higher degrees haveproved

to be no more indispensable, as a group, to the

American capitalist enterprise than those who

honed their skills on assembly lines or in ware-

houses or foundries. The debt-ridden unem-ployed and underemployed college graduates,

therevenue-starvedteachers, theoverworked

andunderpaidserviceprofessionals,even the

occasional whistle-blowing scientist or engi-

neerall face the same kind of situation that

confronted skilled craft-workers in the early

20th century and all American industrial work-

ersinthelate20 thcentury. Inthecomingyears,

we expect to see the remnants of the PMC in-

creasingly making common cause with the rem-

nants of the traditional working class for, at a

minimum, representation in the political pro-cess.ThisistheprojectthattheOccupymove -

ment initiated and spread, for a time anyway,

worldwide.

For further information on the transformation of the health care, legal, and journalistic professions:

Background Notes: The Recent History of the Professional Managerial Class

By John Ehrenreich and Barbara Ehrenreich

www.rosalux-nyc.org/backgroundnotes1


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12

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