To me they're like mere servants of the State, like Lenin talked about in "2. What is to Replace the Smashed State Machine?" in his writing "The State and Revolution"
Under Capitalism, they are its privileged knights that try to deflect and control, if not defend directly its image as "the only option", who have their incentive in doing so, with their class status stake being in their duty to shepherd the means of production and its resulting benefits
However, they don't own the means of production, as they merely manage it for the landholding, industrialist, and financier capitalists
On the other hand, under Socialism, while its privileges will be probably be done away, the PM class on its own would innovated upon, for their new duty of overseeing, managing, and reporting the collectivized cooperatives and state-owned enterprises..
Until the final stage of Communism arrives, I think they're pretty handy
I say this, because I hear such disgusted sentiment in Hexbear against them
And yet so long as they aren't petty proprietors themselves their relationship to production is proletarian, just as it would be if they were a doctor or an engineer.
There's an argument that the PMC doesn't use the means of production and are therefore distinct from the proletariat like the lumpenproletariat are.
Whose argument is that?
Anarchists mostly. I think Malatesta writes about it