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Question about petite bourgeoisie (small business owners) (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml to c/asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml

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Was thinking about the distinctions of this and wondering...

Would it be accurate to say that the petite bourgeoisie are on the same ladder as the bourgeoisie? Or to put it in more English terms, would it to be accurate to say that small business owners are on the same ladder as Jeff Bezos? Just on a much lower rung?

Versus, in this analogy, the proletariat (or working class), are not on the ladder at all.

The idea being that the small business owner is in a less organized stage of development toward the same thing as the conglomerate (if this is happening under capitalist rule). Whereas the working class cannot organically develop in that direction (I suppose a few could through stocks, but that seems like on the level of winning the lottery).

Want to make sure I have my metaphors straight.

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[–] Cowbee@lemmygrad.ml 17 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

They're on the same ladder in the same way a rare proletarian can jump to petite bourgeoisie through frugal saving and luck, and a rare petite bourgeoisie can jump to bourgeoisie through jumping from simple reproduction to reproduction on an expanded scale. Liberals love that these jumps are possible, making "rags to riches" stories, but these are extreme outliers and ultimately the classes themselves remain.

[–] davel@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Liberals love that these jumps are possible

Meanwhile, the petit bourgeois are losing their grip, with the threat of proletarianization looming, and they’re pissed.

Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs

But scapegoating poor whites keeps the conversation away from fascism’s real base: the petite bourgeoisie. This is a piece of jargon used mostly by Marxists to denote small-property owners, whose nearest equivalents these days may be the “upper middle class” or “small-business owners.” FiveThirtyEight reported last May that “the median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000,” or roughly 130 percent of the national median. Trump’s real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn’t poor and working-class voters, but middle-class and affluent whites. Often self-employed, possessed of a retirement account and a home as a nest egg, this is the stratum taken in by Horatio Alger stories. They can envision playing the market well enough to become the next Trump. They haven’t won “big-league,” but they’ve won enough to be invested in the hierarchy they aspire to climb. If only America were made great again, they could become the haute  bourgeoisie—the storied “1 percent.” 

[–] Cowbee@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 3 months ago

Great point, absolutely. It becomes harder and harder for these jumps over time.

[–] demerit@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 3 months ago

Jup Fascism arises when petite bourgeoisie are under economic threat. The Kulaks of East Elbia and Hannover were the first backers of nazism, thanks to the agricultural crisis inside germany post-Versailles.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

So would someone like Jeff Bezos be an example of that "luck" since he started out small? Or would he be more of a cross between "new money" and "old money", since he also got financial help to do it?

That seems like (I am not entirely sure) the kind of distinction you're talking about, is the difference of capital that comes from "old money" (power passed down) versus "new money" (a breakthrough pf petite bourgeoisie to bourgeoisie), with the first one being the norm and the second one being the oddity because of class antagonisms/interests largely keeping petite bourgeoisie from moving upward in class.

[–] Cowbee@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 3 months ago

Bit of both, and they are usually in flux.

[–] demerit@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So would someone like Jeff Bezos be an example of that “luck” since he started out small? Or would he be more of a cross between “new money” and “old money”, since he also got financial help to do it?

Jeff Bezos (adopted) father Mike Bezos was a gusano who worked for exxon - Jeff Bezos was never small.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 3 months ago

I did not know that, but either way, what I meant by "started small" is more that Amazon was an operation he started with others. I remember researching in the past that he got significant financial help with it and that most, if not all, of the programming was done by others (I specifically remember researching it to debunk the pro-billionaire mythos that he bootstrapped his way to the top). But it did technically start out as a small business and then grow. As opposed to, like, if he'd simply been handed control over an existing family company or set up for a role in a major company through family connections and education.