I’m so tired of being the Cassandra of my social life - I call this shit out years ahead of time and nobody believes me or takes my analysis seriously because I said that I’m a communist. Like, holy shit, yes, I am a communist - I want workers to own the entirety of society. That’s the exact opposite of these fascist fucks who essentially want bosses, money and corps to control society. I’m a communist because I saw this fascism coming, I recognized the patterns and incentive structures in society, and realized communism is the best way to defeat fascism - we have to decisively win the class war. And this is a war, don’t confuse it. Mark my words, now that things have gotten to this point, massive violence is inevitable soon.

Did someone say “One Big Union”? Sounds like the IWW would be right up your alley. It’s coming back to life again - definitely check if you have a local branch!

https://www.iww.org/

The IWW is an explicitly radical militant union devoted to overthrowing the tyranny of the wage system and settling the class war through full worker control of all enterprises. It’s an entirely different animal than the bloated business unions who settle for a “fair share” of the profits. The IWW asserts that all of the value produced by the labor of workers should go to workers, and the bosses can just become workers like the rest of us.

Check out Communications Workers of America - they’ve been pushing into the tech world

I’ve seen that reinforcement of workers who toe the line first-hand, people are scared and brainwashed into not acting up or demanding better. It’s why I have a hard time maintaining a job - not because I’m not good at what I do, but because I’m bad at pretending to buy into the capitalist ideology in the workplace.

Agreed, not all managers are bastards but the system they are working within creates horrible results.

I believe I’m one of those knowledge workers. I do cybersecurity and I’m actively working on trying to unionize the sector. I’m not management, and I don’t have hiring or firing power, and I’m reliant on wages to survive.

Actually, I can see the comparison. Many cybersecurity people don’t challenge the power relations in their workplace and instead act as enforcers of corporate policy. That always disappoints me, and I can see the pattern of how even our relative privilege is being actively reduced. I just hope more cybersecurity people will recognize the class struggle we have to wage and organize in solidarity with the rest of the working class.

I get where you’re going with this, and yeah, the PMC helps hold the current system in place. I was thinking about the cybersecurity/engineers/architects/other better paid workers who are still subject to class exploitation even though they’re better off than a line cook.

Also, I like your bit about the professional managerial class being an ideological shield - I see that happening in the workplace all the time where people won’t consider rocking the boat because they want to be management one day.

There is no middle class - there is the working class and the exploiter class. People have misidentified a chunk of the relatively better off working class as somehow not part of the working class. Over time the systems of capitalism and the power imbalances at the heart of the non-unionized workplace will eventually reduce better off workers to the lowest common denominator as the exploiter class demands perpetually growing profit that must come at the cost of the working class.

Both Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion are great, and protests should be disruptive, otherwise they’re just ignored. Maybe they’re not doing enough disruption and damage to force governments to listen. Or, maybe someone should go after energy/oil companies directly via sabotage or other means and cause enough economic damage that the cost of polluting and resource extraction becomes too high for them to profit from.