Elizabeth Warren’s most popular base was recently pegged “The Patagonia Supporters.” They’re richer and whiter and more educated than Bernie Sanders’ base, and because of their comfortable position in the social hierarchy, the system cares for them, and they care for the system. While Sanders’ working class, multiracial base (teachers, servers, nurses, truck drivers) wants to rewire the American political order, Warrens’ supporters have a vested interest in thinking of the system as salvageable, as only temporarily flawed. Yes, Warren is progressive, but how might her version of progressivism actually obstruct the possibility of revolution?

In an article called “Professional-Managerial Chasm,” Gabriel Winant considers the rise of a professional managerial class (PMC) as a result of industrial capitalism. According to Winant, this new class of educated cultural producers took on the job of sculpting, maintaining, and controlling workers– of keeping the proletariat in line through bureaucracy, administration, and technocratic modernization. This is not to say that all members of the PMC have fallen into cahoots with the bourgeoisie. Many educated professionals– and they’re often Bernie Sanders supporters– practice political radicalism by organizing unions, fighting institutional violence, and opposing the carceral state and the military industrial complex. But what about the young professionals who align themselves with progressive politics while also serving the ruling class?

Winant proposes that the goal is not to abandon the PMC, but to turn it against its masters. But my point is not really about the ethics of professionalism. It is about the limits of radicalism in a candidate (Warren) whose base has the privilege of supporting progressive politics while simultaneously divorcing themselves from the working class. In “The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study,” Fred Moten presents a scathing perspective on professionalism. He writes, “It is not possible to speak of a labor that is dedicated to the reproduction of social dispossession as having an ethical condition,” meaning it is not possible to call members of the PMC critically conscious if they can accept the uncritical foundation of public administration-ist thought. The major difference between Sanders and Warren is that he wants to destroy the system; she wants to use the system’s tools (bureaucracy, professionalism, modernization) to fix it.

The issue with Warren’s approach to transformative change is that it does not emanate from the working class. It goes without saying that Warren and Sanders have both proposed smart and progressive futures for the country, and the popularity of both campaigns is exciting. But it is still worthwhile to pause and ask questions about who supports these candidates, and what that support means. How truly radical is a future built on the boring, uncritical ideals of professional managerialism?