Galbraith’s 1967 prediction that knowledge was replacing capital as the strategic factor of production has proven true. The strategic role that technical, organizational and communicative knowledge play today, coupled with the rise of organizations as the basic units of production, has given rise to a new social class - the professional middle class - characterized by the collective ownership of organizations. Yet, the emergence of the professionals’ class has not implied the rise of a new social system, nor involved the concentration of political power in the hands of the new class. The economy remains controlled by the market, and oriented to profits, thus, capitalist. Instead of classical capitalism, what we have is professionals’ capitalism, a system where capitalists and professionals share income and power while fighting for them. Yet, as democracy has become also the dominant political regime in the twentieth century, both classes have lost power to citizens and to politicians that represent them. In the long run, in the conflict for power with capitalists, professionals’ standing will depend on a capacity that sometimes they already prove to have of allying themselves with common people.
Techno-bureaucracy; Professional middle class; Democracy; Capital; Bureaucrat