ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with five distinct non-proletarianising theses. It focuses on the 'unproductiveness' of middle-class labour also on the distinctive political and ideological determination of the 'new petty bourgeoisie'. It draws on the class location of professional workers and on the Thesis of the Professional-Managerial Class and focuses on the contradictory class locations of the new middle class. Important transformations are nevertheless occurring within the NPB: considerable féminisation; income proletarianisation of certain subaltern sectors; mechanisation and disqualification of some mental labour; growth of a mental labour reserve army; and declining 'quality of life' through increasing commodification. Particularly important was the expansion and bureaucratisation of the university, which were indices not of the proletarianisation of the PMC but of its expansion and growth. Nicolaus points out that with the development of capitalism there will be a substantial increase in the mass of profits, whether or not the rate of profit has tended to fall.
