cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/36766269
I know lemmy is titled to the left, so most probable answer is going to be no, managers are our enemy, but hear me out.
I always thought like this: I’m there to work and earn money, not to make friends, not to fake a friendship with any manager. If they fire me, no manager is going to ask me how I’m holding up or what my plans for the future are. What may look like a friendship is all fake.
There is, however, a manager where I work at that everybody agrees she is friendly and goes the extra mile to help employees. When I say everybody I mean that literally, none of the coworkers I asked said anything remotely bad about this person. At my company there are other managers everybody agrees are narcissistic morons and everyone hates them.
I had an argument with this manager everyone likes and after thinking about it, it was mostly my fault we raised our voices. She raised her voice first but because I wasn’t listening to her because she triggered me.
I feel bad about it and I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I’d like to have a private conversation with her to apologize and explain why she triggered me. She also does typical things any manager does that I find very unfair that I want to explain so she maybe stops it.
Is being honest and having such a conversation a stupid idea?
Sounds like they wouldn’t hesitate to apologize, if it wasn’t to a manager. But it seems, in this case, it doesn’t matter wether she is a manager. Not apologizing would not further class struggle nor raise class consciousness in any way. Apologizing doesn’t cost anything else either. On the contrary, they want to do it. She probably needs to hear it. It’s good for the emotional health of anyone involved, including the one apologizing.
I say this, not despite being a Marxist Leninist, but precisely because I’m ML: capitalist, worker, manager and (dare I say it) even cop. Those are all just roles people take on. The roles can change, but we’re all still humans underneath. You can love your enemy and still fight them, when necessary. But if it doesn’t serve a purpose and even makes you feel bad, why bother being mean?
The Nazi and fascist theorist Carl Schmidt (who’s still very influential) viewed politics solely in terms of friend and enemy. And being an enemy to him is meant existential, personal and eternal. He wouldn’t have apologized. Marxists know, that class is not about who you are as a person, but about the social role one occupies. We can distinguish between interpersonal conflicts and class struggle. The true enemy is the class relation itself.