It's old news. The gap between the capitalist class and the working class is growing wider. Power tends to consolidate, to conserve, and to snowball. Those who posess and control capital--both monetary and human--look for ways (via rhetoric, public policy, etc.) to increase the control and capital they have and exclude others from sharing in significant portions of both. So the gap widens. HMOs take power away from doctors. Drastic cuts in state sponsorship of public education take power away from professors. And so on.
As I re-read Michael Zweig's Working-Class Majority, though, two local strikes, one at Eastern Michigan University (see Stephen Krause's blog for continuing updates) and one at the Detroit Public Schools come to mind. Two "professions" (teaching and professing) whose level of agency once planted their memberships firmly in the managerial/professional class. Zweig points to outside mandates (more vo-tech ed, more efficiency, more accountability--all smokescreens that produce easily marketable soundbites) from corporations and the state that serve to strip agency. Today I'll use these teachable, local examples in the classroom as I teach Zweig's book.
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