Abstract

This study offers an examination and a critique of four different theses concerning the class affiliation of technical, professional and managerial workers in monopoly capitalist and post-capitalist or socialist societies. An assessment of each thesis is provided on the basis of the criteria for class analysis laid down by Marx in Capital and in his other relevant works. ;In his class analysis of capitalist society, Marx placed highly trained workers in a privileged stratum of the working class because their earnings were higher than those of ordinary workers. He also predicted that economic developments would reduce the income gap between highly skilled and unskilled workers, as higher skills became more readily available in the market place. Higher skills have in fact become more widely available, but the income gap between highly skilled and unskilled workers has not been closed. It has widened. ;Attempts to provide a more satisfactory explanation of the income gap between highly skilled and unskilled laborers than the one given by Marx have resulted in different views concerning the class affiliation of highly trained workers. According to the theses presented, technical, professional and managerial workers belong respectively to the "new working class," to the "new middle class," to the "professional-managerial class," or to the "bureaucratic and petty bureaucratic classes." ;The basic issues to be resolved are whether technical, professional and managerial workers belong to a social stratum or to a social class, and whether they benefit from or are victimized by "exploitation," in the Marxist sense of the term. Consideration of these issues involves a dicussion of the criteria characterizing Marx's method of class analysis. ;In the final assessment, the thesis of the bureaucratic and petty bureaucratic classes is seen to be more consonant with Marx's method, and to describe more accurately than the other theses the role of technical, professional and managerial workers in capitalist and post-capitalist or socialist societies