White Collar by C. Wright Mills — Read

The assumption that political supremacy follows from functional, economic indispensability underlies all those theories that see the new middle class or any of its sections slated to be the next ruling class. For it is assumed that the class that is indispensable in fulfilling the major functions of the social order will be the next in the sequence of ruling classes. Max Weber in his essay on bureaucracy has made short shrift of this idea: ‘The ever-increasing "indispensability" of the officialdom, swollen to millions, is no more decisive for this question [of power] than is the view of some representatives of the proletarian movement that the economic indispensability of the proletarians is decisive for the measure of their social and political power position. If "indispensability" were decisive, then where slave labor prevailed and where freemen usually abhor work as a dishonor, the "indispensable" slaves ought to have held the positions of power, for they were at least as indispensable as officials and proletarians are today. Whether the power... as such increases cannot be decided a priori from such reasons.'

Yet the assumption that it can runs all through the white-collar literature. Just as Marx, seeing the parasitical nature of the capitalist's endeavor, and the real function of work performed by the workers, predicted the workers' rise to power, so James Burn-ham (and before him Harold Lasswell, and before him John Corbin) assumes that since the new middle class is the carrier of those skills upon which modern society more and more depends, it will inevitably, in the course of time, assume political power. Technical and managerial indispensability is thus confused with the facts of power struggle, and overrides all other sources of power. The deficiency of such arguments must be realized positively: we need to develop and to use a more open and flexible model of the relations of political power and stratification.