Self-Employment

[Catmatic Leftist]

What class would people who are self-employed fall under? They own the business they work at, so they would be considered owners of private property. However, if the person was self-employed and working alone, they're selling their labor power in order to survive. Wouldn't they be considered a proletarian?

[9]

What class would people who are self-employed fall under?

The petit-bourgeoisie.



If the person was self-employed and working alone, would be a proletarian?
Nope, they'd still be petit-bourgeois.

[Tablo]

Oreo man is correct that they are amongst the petite-bourgeois, but they are likely to side with the workers in many cases.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

Petit-Bourgeios/sick of dealing with assholes

[Tavarisch_Mike]

According to strict marxist theory they will belong to the petite-borgeousie, however if he/she has no employees and started the buisness to survive it tends t be more complicated. In allmoust all cases i would consider theese selfemployers to be working class, the swedish syndicalist union SAC organizes them to.

[9]

According to strict marxist theory they will belong to the petite-borgeousie, however if he/she has no employees and started the buisness to survive it tends t be more complicated.

Lots of smack dealers and prostitutes do what they do to survive as well. Class is not a moralistic value judgment - it has nothing to do with that. Saying the self-employed are petit-bourgeois isn't saying that they're 'bad people' or that they might not be in desperate situations etc.

[Widerstand]

Class is not a moralistic value judgment

Sadly half of the forum doesn't get this, as can be seen by the ever ongoing insults of calling others "petty bourgeois" and raging about "lumpenscum".

[la lucha sigue]

But is someone who is self employed necessarily petit-bourgeois (from a completely non-moralistic point of view)? Many self-employed people have very little control over any aspect of the means of production that they happen to have a bourgeois recognised legal interest in. The lives of a significant number of self-employed people are in most respects, if not all, indistinguishable from those who sell their labour to someone else.

After all, from a class perspective what's the difference between a self-employed prostitute selling his/her body to survive and someone selling their labour to an employer?

The whole point of class analysis is to identify the interests of those in respective classes. Does the exploited self-employed person have different class interests from the employee? No, they both stand to gain from removing the property relations and exploitation which makes them have to sell their labour, whether that sale is direct or indirect through an employer.

I would not consider someone, self-employed or not, to be in the petit bourgeois class until the point where they have amassed sufficient capital to free themselves from the need to consistently sell their labour to survive, or until they such time as they then take on employees and thereby make part of their living off the labour of others.

[blake 3:17]

It gets down to what it means to be "self-employed". That can mean being a contract worker, a piece worker, a skilled trades person, the owner of a store, &tc.

It does tende to make people more conservative, not unlike home ownership.

[hatzel]

I think 9's and Widerstand's comments up there pretty much sum this up. To be honest...if the so called 'self-employed' aren't petit bourgeois, then I have literally no idea who is. No. Idea. Whatsoever.

I don't usually just resort to dictionary definitions as explanations, because any ol' numpty can check a dictionary, but I will in this case:


petty bourgeoisie (plural petty bourgeoisies)
(Marxism) A social class of that bourgeoisie that typically works alongside their employees if they have any, exemplified by shopkeepers and professionals*

* [From Free dictionary] including minor businesspeople, tradespeople, and craftworkers

[la lucha sigue]

I think 9's and Widerstand's comments up there pretty much sum this up. To be honest...if the so called 'self-employed' aren't petit bourgeois, then I have literally no idea who is. No. Idea. Whatsoever.

I don't usually just resort to dictionary definitions as explanations, because any ol' numpty can check a dictionary, but I will in this case:

Lots of self-employed people would be petit bourgeois, but not all of them. Self employment is just a tax category within most capitalist countries, and says little by itself on what class interests a person has. A co-operative of working class people will be self employed according to most western tax laws, doesn't make the co-operative petit bourgeois.

While many self-employed will be petit bourgeois, there will be others who fit into this class too, for example senior managers and senior civil servants. The term petit bourgeois includes those people who have some limited access to the control of the means of production, whether in an ownership capacity or not, while not having access to enough capital to have an overall influence. Also their capital isn't sufficient to live completely as parasites, so they must engage in work in similar conditions to elements of the working class.

In general people in this class feel that their class interests are more tied to the capitalist class than someone who is simply engaged in wage slavery. I think the fact that this class is somewhere between working class and the capitalist class is what causes it to become the perjorative term that it has, with an element of class trechory built into its use.

But we should remember that socialism seeks to vest the ownership and control of the means of production in the working class. Self-employment can do the same, there is nothing inherent in self-employment that says that it has to be capitalistic self-employment. We should be careful of labelling those workers who do break the mould of wage slavery as having a non-working class identity or interests. In certain sectors self employed workers have also shown significant promise in organising collective bargaining in opposition to the capitalist class and the State.

But that said, because of the emphasis in self employment on the individual as opposed to collective ownership, it is a tool which suits capitalism very well, and as a legal construct of capitalism has developed all sorts of associations and mechanisms that follow a capitalist agenda. This is perhaps why self employment and the petit bourgeoisie are often associated with each other.

[hatzel]

Self employment is just a tax category within most capitalist countries

Actually I've just realised this whole thread is pretty pointless, as we haven't even defined what we mean by 'self-employed'. Are we using some tax classification? Because...if we are, then there's a question of whether or not we should be, and if we're not, then there's the question of how far we extend the definition of self-employed. Technically speaking, the CEO of some huge multinational is self-employed, as he is not employed by anybody else. So the question is meaningless, really, because the self-employed can perfectly well be hardcore capitalist bourgeois types. So of course we should actually just be defining what the petty bourgeois is, rather than trying to link it to the concept of 'self-employed'...


Still, I wouldn't consider the CEO of some multinational self-employed, nor would I consider workers in a cooperative self-employed. Even though they both are, by the strictest definition of the word, I don't think people would use that definition in everyday parlance, and doubt the OP was, either...

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Lots of smack dealers and prostitutes do what they do to survive as well. Class is not a moralistic value judgment - it has nothing to do with that. Saying the self-employed are petit-bourgeois isn't saying that they're 'bad people' or that they might not be in desperate situations etc.

I never claimed that its about moralistic judgement. What i mean to say is that manny self-employd tend to have the same interest as the proletarians, forexample in many swedish sub-urbs there is hughe unemployment thats have been permanent in the last decades, where some have been forced to start a buisness since they have no chance to get a job. Theire buisness is all about survival, not expanding or so since the possibillity of that is not realistic, they live under the same, materialisit, conditions as workers and will have the same interests and therefor belongs to the working class. Observe that im just talking about self-employers without anny employees, and ofcourse there is exeptions.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Actually I've just realised this whole thread is pretty pointless, as we haven't even defined what we mean by 'self-employed'. Are we using some tax classification? Because...if we are, then there's a question of whether or not we should be, and if we're not, then there's the question of how far we extend the definition of self-employed. Technically speaking, the CEO of some huge multinational is self-employed, as he is not employed by anybody else. So the question is meaningless, really, because the self-employed can perfectly well be hardcore capitalist bourgeois types. So of course we should actually just be defining what the petty bourgeois is, rather than trying to link it to the concept of 'self-employed'...


Still, I wouldn't consider the CEO of some multinational self-employed, nor would I consider workers in a cooperative self-employed. Even though they both are, by the strictest definition of the word, I don't think people would use that definition in everyday parlance, and doubt the OP was, either...

Good point.
When im talking about self-employed im talking about people like my neighbour who is a plumber and fan assambler. He gots his own firm but with no employees and he is doing all the work alone.

[FreeEire]

While not directly related to a class debate, since the economic difficulties finished the construction trade here, a lot of self-employed sub-contractors have difficulty securing payment, holding only a very flimsy legal entitlement to it, much less than meager rights an Employment Contract of a in-house worker would carry.

While they were self-employed, these people were basically selling their labour directly to property developers who preferred hiring them rather than having to recruit their own employees and equipment. They would be people like carpenters, brick layers/masons, painters from largely Working Class families and are likely to side with the Proletariat and Leftists.

While we tend to use the definitions of original Marxism, I think it would be worthwhile to examine them in the changing face of an adapting Capitalist system which has changed its methods of wage slavery to meet a changing society over the last 30 years.

[hatzel]

When im talking about self-employed im talking about people like my neighbour who is a plumber and fan assambler

This raises a really good point (in my head), and goes some way towards explaining my absolute aversion to all this dogmatic talk of employment classes as hard-and-fast sections with great big concrete walls between them. I'll take my dad as an example, as he spent most of his working life as a bricklayer. Self-employed, with his own company (which was just him), he'd just wait for somebody to call him, asking for a wall to be built, and then he'd build it. Sometimes he'd get an 'assistant', such as myself, or a friend. This friend might be a plumber, an electrician, a plasterer or a carpenter, if the job was building an extension or something. This is petty bourgeois, really, and we shouldn't deny it. No matter what the circumstances around him, and his clearly being 'working class' (if you'd met him, you'd surely agree), this is a petty bourgeois institution, by the technical definition. However...he also works for others, in the same way they work for him. An electrician might have some job which requires some brickwork or plasterwork, and they would then 'employ' my dad, even if just for the week, to do that work.


In these kinds of situation, an individual can be simultaneously proletariat and petty bourgeois. Or, maybe not simultaneously, but alternating between the two, depending on whether he is working for himself that day, or for somebody else. For the most part, I would expect these petty bourgeois people in the building trade to actually be no different from the proletariat, particularly as they operate in effectively the same way as proletarian construction workers (and often are). Some of these people may even consider themselves to operate by floating between employers. As in, their clients, whoever wants the wall built, temporarily 'employ' them, and purchase their labour. None of these people really have these big dreams of setting up some construction empire, employing hundreds of workers to build stadiums and so on...so sure, they can be treated almost like the proletariat. Which would explain why SAC include them under their 'umbrella'. It doesn't change that they're technically petty bourgeois, by the definition of the word, but it seems that some people prefer to go by some concrete thing, 'the proletariat have these needs, we interact with them like this', and extending this to the petty bourgeoisie as if it was some contingent class. As if they're supposed to universally be the semi-enemies of the proletariat or something, forgetting the whole point of it...the people between the two groups, proletariat and bourgeois, with some more sympathetic to one group, and some to another. Rather than some kind of group it's for some reason negative to be a part of :confused:


...and this summarises why I don't care for the over-the-top dogmatism of this whole class system idea, pretending that the petty bourgeois are all reactionary and would oppose the revolution because it would be against their interests or something like that...I don't know...but maybe that's just because I'm one of those annoying people who says 'a socialist society would be beneficial for all humanity!' and all that...

[Fawkes]

[...]prostitutes do what they do to survive as well.

Yeah, and they're proletarians.

[blake 3:17]

When im talking about self-employed im talking about people like my neighbour who is a plumber and fan assambler. He gots his own firm but with no employees and he is doing all the work alone.

Working class.

[9]

Yeah, and they're proletarians.
They're lumpenproletarian.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Working class.

Exactly.

[EvilRedGuy]

They're lumpenproletarian.


Dosen't excist. Unless you mean organized crime, robbers, the criminal rich elite.

lumpenproletariat = Mafia boss and other criminal elite.

[Fawkes]

They're lumpenproletarian.

In most cases, they sell their labor power for a wage to their boss (pimp, escort agency, madam, etc.), making them proletarian. At best, they're self-employed and have no pimp or escort agency, making them petit-bourgeois. The fact that they operate outside of the legal framework of most capitalist systems does nothing to alter their relationship to the means of production. Relegating them to the class of lumpenproletariat serves to alienate an already ostracized faction of workers, not to mention ignore materialist class analysis.

[ckaihatsu]

For the most part, I would expect these petty bourgeois people in the building trade to actually be no different from the proletariat, particularly as they operate in effectively the same way as proletarian construction workers (and often are). Some of these people may even consider themselves to operate by floating between employers.




Sometimes he'd get an 'assistant', such as myself, or a friend. This friend might be a plumber, an electrician, a plasterer or a carpenter, if the job was building an extension or something.


It may help to consider the question within the two exclusively existing "realms" of [1] economics and [2] politics. In relation to the means of production a regular worker has only *their own* labor to sell, and that's it, period. Nothing else is "brought to the table". As a result their political *consciousness* will, or should, be entirely with the proletariat against the exploitation from their bosses-in-common, the bourgeoisie.

But many who are self-employed *do* "bring more to the table" than just their own labor power -- if they're using their own tools and working in cooperative networks, however paltry for both, then they're in effect in an ownership role, however slight, over the means of their own production.

While there's plenty of gray area here, as people have been pointing out, it is still a clean distinction -- a material "step-up" -- from having to resort to only selling one's own labor alone. The use of a business entity is another indicator, since there are tax and legal benefits that go with such a distinction, thereby conferring a degree of formal ownership recognition.

That said, of course plenty who are "self-employed" may still be effectively *unemployed* or *underemployed*, scraping by regardless and objectively no better off than someone working a 9-to-5 for wages -- the reality will vary.





It gets down to what it means to be "self-employed". That can mean being a contract worker, a piece worker, a skilled trades person, the owner of a store, &tc.

It does tende to make people more conservative, not unlike home ownership.


This is an important point, too, in that one's aspirations to upward mobility from some nominal position of ownership can affect one's political consciousness. The bourgeoisie *loves* to seize upon this rags-to-riches narrative, in a propagandistic way, to swell its ranks with the yuppies and yuppie-wannabes, if only for political purposes. ('Yuppie' = *y*oung *u*rban *p*rofessional, more in use during the newly re-financialized '80s.)

The side that the "middle class" takes is a good indicator to watch for an assessment of the class struggle overall -- in periods with an uptick in the number of mass struggles the petty bourgeois types *may* find themselves more influenced by movements on the ground, and may identify with them -- or they may not.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

If self-employed people are proletarians, does that mean they exploit themselves?

[ckaihatsu]

If self-employed people are proletarians, does that mean they exploit themselves?


You just made yourself the Zen Master with that one...!


x D


(What is the sound of one self-employed person exploiting themselves?)


x D

[hatzel]

If self-employed people are proletarians, does that mean they exploit themselves?

If self-employed people exploit themselves, does that make them sadomasochists?

[BlackMarx]

What class would people who are self-employed fall under? They own the business they work at, so they would be considered owners of private property. However, if the person was self-employed and working alone, they're selling their labor power in order to survive. Wouldn't they be considered a proletarian?
Petit-Bourgeoisie. Petit-Bourgeoisie sell their labor power to live, but usually have some form of a capital in order to do so. Proletariat are people who have been completely removed from the means of production and only can sell their labor power. Proletariat typically have been deskilled due to cooperation and the /division of labor. If someone is self employed, they usually have skills necessary to bring to the market. They just implement their labor power, to give it value.