New NYC Mayor Eric Adams caused a stir earlier this week when he said that “My low-skill workers, my cooks, my dishwashers, my messengers, my shoe-shine people, those who work at Dunkin’ Donuts — they don’t have the academic skills to sit in a corner office.”
This prompted a backlash, in part because it was seen as insulting the dignity of my cooks, my messengers, and my Dunkin’ Donuts employees.
In fairness, as a politician, Adams probably didn’t intend to be insulting. But the comment is revealing of social class in the US.
Many in ruling class acamedia use the terms “low-skilled” and “high-skilled” a lot, which are also conflated as stand-ins for “low-wage” and “high-wage.”
The labor theory of value (LTV) suggested that the value of a commodity was determined by and could be measured objectively by the average number of labor hours “socially necessary,” on Marx’s view, to produce it.
Of course, it is clearly possible to expend a large quantity of labor time on producing a good that ends up having little or no value, like sitting in an academic corner office.
I am being facetious, but only slightly.
At this stage of capitalism, the LTV is criticized (by capitalists) because the amount of labor put into producing something ‘socially necessary’ doesn’t correspond with ‘subjective value’ or what people in the market are willing to pay. This begs the question of what is ‘socially necessary,’ which is determined by the ruling class, who decides what ‘the market’ produces. The ruling class is the Dream Hoarding top 20%: over the past two generations, the share of Americans with four-year college degrees has more than doubled, and a new class of well-educated upper-middle-income professionals has emerged as a potent social and political force.
By and large, members of this class have risen higher through education and mastered its rules. They do well on standardized tests, they get good grades, and they forge relationships with professors and other mentors that serve them well throughout their careers. Although some have taken advantage of family connections (through “legacy admissions” to universities, for example), many owe their advancement to their talents and skills. They insist they have achieved their position through their own efforts.
(Many have accumulated horrendous student debt, turning them into modern-day indentured servants.)
Regardless, the ruling class selects for college graduates not only because many are required to become indentured servants, or at least ‘buy into’ their system, but also because a degree sorts workers as a signal to employers. What’s the signal? This degree certifies some intelligence, conformity, and willingness to work.
These are the '“high-skilled” and “high-wage” earners which control the economy’s commanding heights, and then buy off low-skill, high-wage politicians to do their bidding.
But HS and HW earners can be distinguished from productive workers doing “socially necessary” labor. What is “socially necessary” should be decided democratically, in a democracy.
But, this isn’t a democracy, is it? Or, more clearly, it’s a capitalist democracy, where the capitalists make the decisions.
Being better educated doesn’t make you a better person, nor does it qualify you to rule over those with less education. America’s founding creed teaches that all are created equal, not in talent, but in dignity and worth. Marx believed that as well.
Notes
Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do about It, by Richard Reeves (ISBN 978-0815729129)
The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, by Bryan Caplan ISBN 978-0691174655
Other low-skill workers