Setting aside that our economy is by and large organized to benefit a State-financial Elite and the technocrat Caste that serves them, let's consider the two classes of worker in what Peter Drucker labeled the Knowledge Economy in his 1993 book Post-Capitalist Society.
At the risk of simplifying Drucker's nuanced account, here is a precis:
The Marxist class division of labor vs. capitalist/management no longer adequately describes the new economy, as knowledge workers own "the means of production" which is first and foremost knowledge. Corporations and government offer an organization within which workers can apply their knowledge (i.e. the means of production in a knowledge economy).
Since the new economy is no longer characterized by capital vs. labor, it is a post-capitalist economy.
Knowledge workers are a minority of the workforce; the majority are service workers, either skilled or low-skilled.
Economist Robert B. Reich divides the workforce into similar categories: "symbolic analysts" (knowledge workers) and two classes of service workers: "routine producers" and "in-person servers."
Of Two Minds
The Knowledge Economy's Two Classes of WorkersCharles Hugh-Smith
Just as the Industrial Era replaced the Agricultural Era and was different from it, so too, the Digital Era is replacing the Industrial Era and bringing about another profound transformation of work and management.
