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Once again, I find that @Maarblek is ahead of me in analysis. As he said a while ago: The only goal the left has now or has ever had is the liquidation of the kulaks (small property owners). This makes sense of the class alignments we see, and the left’s historic failures.
It’s a funny thing that two classes of people tend to join the left: The managerial class, and the lumpenproletariat. In modern terms: tech/educated class + the perpetually precariously employed / job hopper. What do they have in common? They would seem to be class enemies.
What they share is a hatred of the small property owners. On the part of the lumpen, these are often the people he collects a paycheck from (sure, some of them shitty). The lumpen doesn’t work for the elites directly because they demand high education and contract out low skills.
On the part of the managerial class and the elites, however, the small property owner becomes a target when growth in other areas is stalled. That market share is a potential avenue for firm growth once other options for expansion are foreclosed.
The managers promise the lumpens that if they help them overthrow the small owners and consolidate power in mega-firms, the managers will give the lumpens goodies (a small UBI, whatever). The Soviets made the same promise. And perhaps it holds—briefly.
But once you consolidate all the economic power in a few hands, if those who hold it then say, “Okay, time’s up, please report to your oblast office to request a window for your state apartment” then there’s nothing you can do. You have no power & ceded all ability to obtain any.
The people in the managerial class love the idea of eliminating small property owners. Owners of small firms (average employee number in the US: 10) have no need for managers with advanced degrees. Only giant corporations have any demand for a thick management layer.
So socialism, understood as its real historical instantiation (not a utopia), is a natural fit for the managerial class. It demands great centralization, which creates demand for a large number of managerial jobs. Promise the lumpen something (promises are free) to gain power.
The fairytale about this great centralization leading to worker control of the economy derives directly from Marx’s—however good he was at understanding capitalism—incorrect eschatology and great failure to understand revolution. There’s no natural road from one to the other.
So it must be understood that socialism, in its incarnation as ideology of ever-centralizing capital control, will always bend away from empowering workers, because it always begins by first scooping up all power and promising—later—that the managers will give it away.
The only time workers have actually had greater levels of autonomy and economic control has been under centralized governments that made specific policies to spread out ownership within their borders while legally enforcing certain forms of worker protection.
