Rise and Fall of the Professional Managerial Class
Transcript of 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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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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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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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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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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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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DEATH OF A YUPPIE DREAM
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.
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DEATH OF A YUPPIE DREAM
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
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EHRENREICH & EHRENREICH
DEATH OF A YUPPIE DREAM
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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DEATH OF A YUPPIE DREAM
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