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Why are small business owners considered petit bourgeoisie? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 3 days ago by znsh@lemmygrad.ml to c/asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml

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This question is coming from another post where I was asking what the intelligensia and petit bourgeoisie difference is (https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10748355)

This is a comment I left when discussing: "This one is really difficult for me to grasp, it’s probably my ignorance and lack of knowledge, but why would someone who is a small business owner that doesn’t employ any other worker be bourgeois? Are freelancers and struggling artists who are trying to get their foot in the door of an industry also in that class? I hope I don’t come off as aggressive (I just read back what I wrote and it sounds a bit like that, but I swear it isn’t :D)"

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[–] zedcell@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

They sell the output of their labour, not the right to use their labour for a day/week/month at the going rate for labour power (the average cost to reproduce a worker plus maybe some bonus pay for scarcer labour skills or a bribe for being a labour overseer).

In the one case, the service of photography is being sold at the going rate for photography and no surplus value is extracted from the labour. In the other case labour power itself is purchased, and the capitalist is now responsible for extracting as much useful input as possible from the labourer during the time they've purchased the labour. In that way they can profit from surplus value produced in excess of the cost they paid for the labour power.