I chose social (service) workers, because Social Worker is a protected title in many states in the US but there are many people who do not have their degree/licensure who engage in the same if not similar work so I wanted to capture that.
Gonna preface my ideas with the fact that I have a basic understanding of the classes so I could be off base and would love feedback/corrections if I’m not applying the terms correctly.
I think the kneejerk reaction from people when they hear that someone works in social services would be that they are petty bourgeois, but I believe that because the field is so broad, and there is so much overlap in work that it is both petty and proletarian. For example, licensed Social Workers can engage in private or group practice where they work for themselves. At the same time, they have the option of working in the public/private/nonprofit sector if they would like, doing the same type of work or different, where they sell their labor to their employer. They can also do both of these things at the same time, or do one and then the other as they choose to change jobs. There are also people who do not have these qualifications who do essentially the same work, but can ONLY sell their labor to their employer, and do not have the option of starting their own practice, therefore I would consider them specifically proletariat. Their wages are often very, very low, typically to the point of qualifying for different types of low income assistance programs.
I think this probably gets more complex, too, due to the fact that the work has been professionalized over time with the advent of the degree and the licensure requirements while non-professional workers are still widely used and exploited in tandem.
Or, would Social Workers and social service workers necessarily exist in different classes from one another due to the professionalization of one and not the other (in the eyes of the employer)?
So yeah I’d love to hear any thoughts on this
Having the option to work for themselves doesn’t automatically make them bourgeoisie. Class describes people’s relationship to the product of their labour, not their potential relationships. A social worker could set up their own practice, in the same way a cleaner or electrician could become self employed - it changes their individual relationship with their labour, but doesn’t mean everyone doing the same job has that same relationship.
I think when I focus on working in private practice, I have a particular idea of the working conditions of the social workers compared to those that do not or cannot do that. I didn’t quite flesh out what those differences are. I think I also got lost in the sauce trying to classify the workers that there are other things I neglected or just straight up forgot about while thinking about this, combined with my personal experience and struggle in the profession. Glad you reoriented me, though.
I keep trying to figure out how to clarify my thoughts in response to you, but I can’t even figure out where to start because as I type things out, I keep bringing myself back to the definition you pointed out and I think disentangling some of these things would be needed before even trying to classify the workers. So I’m just gonna ramble on here and if you have any thoughts on it I think it could be really helpful in reframing the question for me.
For the rest, this is explicitly from the perspective of the US, where requirements for the profession can be quite different than that of other countries as you can guess lol.
The working conditions for social (service) workers can be radically different. In private practice, working conditions and wages are significantly improved, and the type of work, which is typically therapy, is much more focused on the individual and coping in a capitalist society. In general, positions that do not require licensure are those much more focused on case management, where one is focused moreso on trying to change the material conditions for the individual but even this is not black and white because these same workers can do crisis work, for example…But those workers are often supervised by someone who is licensed where it’s not required of case management. And supervision in this sense is not quite the same as how we would think of it in other contexts.
Referencing StillNoLeftLeft again, the work has largely functioned as an arm of the state in order to quell revolutionary potential in people by providing them with their basic needs, as well as diverting efforts of potential workers away from revolutionary activity towards a watered down version of this. But then come nonprofits. Part of the purpose of diverting jobs towards nonprofits and away from the public sector was to weaken unions. But in this, there has been the potential for freedom of work and the mission of the agency where I believe social (service) workers can and have pushed back against this mechanism. There are a subset of workers whose personal goal is to no longer have a job because the conditions under which social work is “needed” will no longer exist. An example of an agency trying to approach this issue from a broader sense than meeting peoples basic needs are trying to work alongside the homeless community and build political consciousness in that population. As you can imagine, the state tries to wrangle in and/or crush agencies that do not seek to maintain and replicate current conditions, but I feel like more and more groups with that outlook have popped up.
So, I don’t yet know how to parse all of this out because I feel like there are a lot of contradictions and that it’s quite complex. I don’t know if these are not the variables that I should be focusing on and that I’m too zoomed in but if you read all that and have thoughts, again I’d love to hear em