Petty Bourgeoisie

[Althusser]

What is the definition of petty or petite bourgeoisie? To my understanding, it is a middle class person who employs people and works himself. (store owner, landlord) rather than the bourgeoisie who just do intellectual labor while they profit off of the exploitation of the working people they employ. What is petty bourgeoisie, and what other groups count as petty bourgeoisie? I heard that all intellectuals and the Russian Orthodox Church in Tsarist Russia was petty bourgeois, and I need a solid definition of what the term means.

[Brutus]

If you employ someone, but work yourself. If you Subsist solely from other people you are bourgeois.

[TheEmancipator]

If you employ someone, but work yourself. If you Subsist solely from other people you are bourgeois.

Are we all agreed that employees tend to be prollies then since they depend solely on their salary (even if they tend to own land?

Where does the classical, western employee class fit in?

[Brutus]

From good ol' wiki:
The petite bourgeousie are economically distinct from the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat, who are social-class strata who entirely rely on the sale of their labor-power for survival; and also are distinct from the capitalist class haute bourgeoisie (high bourgeoisie) who own the means of production, and thus can buy the labor-power of the proletariat and lumpenproletariat to work the means of production. Though the petite bourgeoisie can buy the labor of others, unlike the haute bourgeoisie, they typically work alongside their employees; and, although there are business owners, they do not own a controlling share of the means of production. The means of production owned by the petite bourgeoisie does not generate enough revenue surplus value to permit the accumulation of capital to be reinvested into production; unless they take extreme financial chances.

[Jimmie Higgins]

What is the definition of petty or petite bourgeoisie? To my understanding, it is a middle class person who employs people and works himself. (store owner, landlord) rather than the bourgeoisie who just do intellectual labor while they profit off of the exploitation of the working people they employ. What is petty bourgeoisie, and what other groups count as petty bourgeoisie? I heard that all intellectuals and the Russian Orthodox Church in Tsarist Russia was petty bourgeois, and I need a solid definition of what the term means.Yeah today in most urban areas they tend to be induvidual (or family) producers: small farmers, small business people, self-employed contracters, and skilled professionals. In some countries there is still a rural petty-bourgoise that can be sort of a semi/post-peasantry. Also I would put government and privite beurocrats (some levels of management) in this category since they have a degree of control in the system but are still dependant and subservient to the big capitalists.

I think one of the significant things about this category is that it is more fluid than the upper-capitalists and most workers. They are dependant on capitalist relations but these relations can also subvert the petty-bourgoise so it tends to be an unpredictable group in society, sometimes identifying with class struggles, other times supporting reaction (think the tea-party) and even being the raw-materials for fascism (like Hindu Nationalist in India or Golden Dawn-supporting Cops in Greece).

[Luís Henrique]

What is the definition of petty or petite bourgeoisie? To my understanding, it is a middle class person who employs people and works himself. (store owner, landlord) rather than the bourgeoisie who just do intellectual labor while they profit off of the exploitation of the working people they employ.

Basically, owners of means of production that do not constitute capital. Ie, their economic activity aims to reproduce their living conditions, not to reproduce capital. They may or may not employ other people. On the other hand, someone can have no employees and be bourgeois, if his or her activity seeks to reproduce capital. In other words, the "petite" bourgeoisie is not composed of small capitalists (it is a misnomer), but by non-capitalist owners of means of production.

It has little to do with the intellectual/manual labour divide (a teacher is in principle a proletarian, in spite of doing intellectual labour). To the extent it has do to with that, it is outdated (it probably refers to office labour in the 19th century, which was much privileged above manual workers. But with "scientific" management, the position of office clerks was eventually lowered to that of the proletariat in general).


What is petty bourgeoisie, and what other groups count as petty bourgeoisie? I heard that all intellectuals and the Russian Orthodox Church in Tsarist Russia was petty bourgeois, and I need a solid definition of what the term means.

When we say an intellectual is "petty bourgeois", we usually don't mean that he or she actually belongs to such class; but that his or her intellectual perspective is limited by the prejudices, wishes, beliefs - in a word, by the ideology - of the petty bourgeoisie.

Luís Henrique

[Comrade #138672]

Are we all agreed that employees tend to be prollies then since they depend solely on their salary (even if they tend to own land?

Where does the classical, western employee class fit in?Yes. They tend to be proletarians.

I'm not sure about the manager type, though. Where do managers fit in? On the one hand, they are proletarians, because they are formally wage-workers. On the other hand, they are closer to the (petty) bourgeoisie than other workers, because they have power over other workers, so they seem to be somewhat in between.

[Jimmie Higgins]

^good point about the difference between objective class and consiousness or outlook. Petty-bourgoise gets thrown around a lot on the left (and I am definately guilty of this) but it's usually mean in terms of outlook: a worker who hates corporations but thinks that "buying local" is an alternative is looking to a "petty-bourgoise" solution.

It is a very dominant view in the US (which is why it get's thrown around a lot) and you can just look at most pop-culture and entertinment and see how semi-autonomous skilled professionals are presented as "virtuous"; the brave Scientist, the Detective, the artist, the Lawyer batteling with logic, and cops probably make up 80% of occupations in popular literative. This is partially due to the class position of the skilled professionals who produce cultural products (who can "create" but are still bound to the framework created by the market... and more specifically their direct financial bosses - patrons, foundations or entertainment companies) but also do to the ubiquity of this outlook and a generally non-threatening position to the ruling class (you can criticize "greed" for polluting the purity of art or the legal system or whatnot, but it's all "inside the box" of the logic of capital ("sombody needs to be police, we just need nicer/tougher/fairer people in that position" - "artists need to sell their art, we just don't want greed to get in the way of their art").


Yes. They tend to be proletarians.

I'm not sure about the manager type, though. Where do managers fit in? On the one hand, they are proletarians, because they are formally wage-workers. On the other hand, they are closer to the (petty) bourgeoisie than other workers, because they have power over other workers, so they seem to be somewhat in between.Yeah, I think that's the other thing about talking about all induvidual positions in the class system - and the petty-bourgoise in particular: it's not really fixed, it's all sort of floating. You couldn't make a chart listing all positions in production and draw an exact line between classes - well maybe you could with a lot of specific information, but that chart wouldn't stay current for long.

I think managers could be basically skilled or higher-up workers or they could be related to production in a much more clearly petty-bourgoise sort of way - it would depend on the specifics of their position. Artisan work becomes de-skilled and becomes proletarian. I think the same could be said of some other professions; certaintly teachers, a large chunk of Doctors maybe.

[Lucretia]

This might seem like a obscure bit of quibbling, but I would not classify skilled white-collar professionals as petty bourgeoisie. I would consider them analogous to the petty bourgeoisie or "old middle class," by virtue of (a) their embodying the functions of labor and capital simultaneously, and of (b) embodying the function of capital by possessing property that serves as the basis of personal accumulation (in the case of the new middle class, such property exclusively takes the form of a management skill, whereas productive property can take multiple forms for the old middle class). But they are different in that the petty bourgeoisie, properly speaking, owns the productive property the entire production process in which he is involved (the owner of a small general store, a carpenter who works with his own tools from home). Members of the new middle class do not own the means of production involved in the larger process of production in which they are participants.

This is why the new middle class, unlike the petty bourgeoisie, is the product of monopoly capitalism.

[MarxArchist]

Yeah today in most urban areas they tend to be induvidual (or family) producers: small farmers, small business people, self-employed contracters, and skilled professionals. In some countries there is still a rural petty-bourgoise that can be sort of a semi/post-peasantry. Also I would put government and privite beurocrats (some levels of management) in this category since they have a degree of control in the system but are still dependant and subservient to the big capitalists.

I think one of the significant things about this category is that it is more fluid than the upper-capitalists and most workers. They are dependant on capitalist relations but these relations can also subvert the petty-bourgoise so it tends to be an unpredictable group in society, sometimes identifying with class struggles, other times supporting reaction (think the tea-party) and even being the raw-materials for fascism (like Hindu Nationalist in India or Golden Dawn-supporting Cops in Greece).

Postmodernism has complicated the class discussion as a whole. We no longer enjoy the proletariat/petty bourgeois/bourgeoisie definition of class. For example, what's your take on the "yuppie" label we see so often in conversations/actions against gentrification? Are most people who move from the suburbs to urban area's who consciously or unconsciously take part in the gentrification process to automatically be seen as enemies of the working class? My experience in Seattle, the Bay Area and L.A. is sometimes our class analysis is based on the most oppressed. The most oppressed become the priority "class" and in the case of gentrification people who once were considered working class become the "enemy". Recently, in San Fransisco, this manifested in anarchists breaking peoples car windows and attacking small restaurants and other symbols of "yuppie" culture.

This can branch into identity politics which in many cases postulates that (if not in theory then practice), women, people of color, colonized people's and gay/lesbian people are members of different classes via their gender/race/sexuality alone. Wouldn't that, in a way, place a large portion of workers in a sort of petty-bourgeois camp in the eyes of some modern (postmodern) socialist theorists and in the eyes of "the most oppressed"? At what point does this fragmentation and compartmentalization of social issues into different class interests become a hindrance to the broader working class efforts to end capitalism?

When I can post links I'll provide both Marxist and anarchist sources on the question's I'd like to talk about. One piece is on socialistworker.org from Sharon Smith entitled "Marxism and Identity Politics" and the other is an anarchist piece titled "Against Separatism:Anarchism and Identity Politics". (both are controversial as they question the manner in which we organize against both capitalism and oppression).

"Hegemony and Socialist Strategy", a book written by Ernesto LaClau and Chantal Mouffe is in large part the intellectual foundation for the shattering of the traditional proletariat/petty bourgeois/bourgeoisie concept of class. The point of me bringing this up, hopefully not off topic, is to explore, as you said, the more complex social roles capitalism creates. My main concern is what sort of strategy we should take in ending those social roles when clearly many of us no longer operate from the definition of class as put forth by Marx.

[Jimmie Higgins]

^Interesting post and I think this will make for an interesting discussion. Below is my take on some of the things you brought up, sorry if I'm snarky in parts but something about the internet makes me write that way :D


Postmodernism has complicated the class discussion as a whole.Well in my opinion that's because postmodernism is 10% insight and 90% the idealist confusion of intellectuals. It's "complicated" but frankly I think it's more convoluted.


We no longer enjoy the proletariat/petty bourgeois/bourgeoisie definition of class.We don't? I work, have no savings, and can not survive without wages... proletariat seems like a pretty spot-on definition of my experience and where I fit into production.


For example, what's your take on the "yuppie" label we see so often in conversations/actions against gentrification?I'm a big fan of the term and use it often in insults and have LONG before I was radical. It's not very percise or political of me, but when I get mad at someone acting snobby, somtimes it comes out. Yuppie just means young professional - sometimes we call them "Hipsters" today and when we mean a Trust-funded founder of some blog or magazine (rather than a hipster who works at a coffee-shop), then really "hipster" just means a modern "yuppie". At any rate, "yuppie" is a non-scientific description, nothing wrong with it in common speech, but it is not "a relation of production". Most yuppies are either skilled white collar workers or some kind of petty-bourgoise professional or small owner. The fundamental relations have remained, the description just is a broader and more culturally-oriented term.


Are most people who move from the suburbs to urban area's who consciously or unconsciously take part in the gentrification process to automatically be seen as enemies of the working class?No, the developers and city hall who give deals to their developer/speculator buddies are the real issue. If some gay workers and professionals or young white workers or professionals of a bohemian subculture move into an area, essentially they are trying to get cheap rent. A lot of resentment gets built up and I totally understand that, but it's misdirected when it's focused on the Starbucks drinker, rather than Starbucks. Capitalism always rearranges our lives and urban areas - shuffling things around to find new angles for new profits.


My experience in Seattle, the Bay Area and L.A. is sometimes our class analysis is based on the most oppressed. The most oppressed become the priority "class" and in the case of gentrification people who once were considered working class become the "enemy". Recently, in San Fransisco, this manifested in anarchists breaking peoples car windows and attacking small restaurants and other symbols of "yuppie" culture.Well this, again, is more about resentment IMO - all the fancy shops moving into an area where there are prostitutes and homeless on the street at the same time. It's rage against such callous displays of snobbery. We don't have much of an established radical tradition aside from some links from the 60s and 70s and so that means as radicalism (hopefully) begins to rise again, people are going to be a little raw and there will probably be many things that are not all that productive.

I live in East Oakland and work in Berkeley, so I really privitely rage all the time as I interact with pretty aloof professionals who have no freaking idea what life is like for most, but their snobbery and just ignorance of systemic racism or the way policing actually gets done on the street or whatever is a symptom. If there were class movements, strikes, and struggles against oppression in the streets, they could no longer be so aloof; some might side with our struggles, many will turn against them, they may be just as annoying either way, but the larger social and class struggles will have forced much more of the population to at least be aware of such things.

Right now, workers and the oppressed are invisible. We are abstractions, just charts of the underemployed or desperate. Some cop shot some unarmed kid - oh, well the news says he may have had gang affiliations, so case closed. But in periods of struggle the question of "which side are you on" becomes much less avoidable.


This can branch into identity politics which in many cases postulates that (if not in theory then practice), women, people of color, colonized people's and gay/lesbian people are members of different classes via their gender/race/sexuality alone. Wouldn't that, in a way, place a large portion of workers in a sort of petty-bourgeois camp in the eyes of some modern (postmodern) socialist theorists and in the eyes of "the most oppressed"? At what point does this fragmentation and compartmentalization of social issues into different class interests become a hindrance to the broader working class efforts to end capitalism? Interesting, well this has been the case for a little while now - at least since the 1990s IMO. I don't use "privilege theory" but I do think it's at least a positive step forward from ID politics which did seem to cause people to obsess over "levels of oppression" and related ideas like "the multitude" further confused an understanding of both class and oppression IMO. But I think while there can be some insights from these postmodern ideas, a lot of it comes from a confusion over fundamental workings of society and the more observable effects. How we view class changes, but the fundamental relations have not really changed in my view.


"Hegemony and Socialist Strategy", a book written by Ernesto LaClau and Chantal Mouffe is in large part the intellectual foundation for the shattering of the traditional proletariat/petty bourgeois/bourgeoisie concept of class. The point of me bringing this up, hopefully not off topic, is to explore, as you said, the more complex social roles capitalism creates. My main concern is what sort of strategy we should take in ending those social roles when clearly many of us no longer operate from the definition of class as put forth by Marx.
I think the return of some class struggle and capitalist crisis internationally may be clarifying to some of these controversies. I don't believe that there has been a fundamental change in class relations, just changes on the organization and breakdown of class functions and I think this has lead to some confusion among a section of intellectuals.

[MarxArchist]

^Interesting post and I think this will make for an interesting discussion. Below is my take on some of the things you brought up, sorry if I'm snarky in parts but something about the internet makes me write that way :D

Well in my opinion that's because postmodernism is 10% insight and 90% the idealist confusion of intellectuals. It's "complicated" but frankly I think it's more convoluted.

The things is, idealism seems to be taking over on the socialist left and yes, intellectuals and their various idealist theories seem to be at the foundation. Specifically, the tendency for many of us to sacrifice sound class analysis on the alter of identity. In Marx's time fighting oppression and capitalism went hand in hand. Not so much these days as a lot of people demand equal and even lopsided attention be paid to their experience with oppression outside of class struggle. I think the most obvious cases are some feminist theory which says women are a separate class from men with distinct class interests and another more obvious form of this mentality is black and or other minority nationalist factions in the fight against racism and or colonialism. It tends to focus purely on "oppressor class" vs "oppressed class", which in my opinion leads to greater fragmentation and even serves to compliment in lieu of abolish the divisions that capitalism creates and benefits from. It creates the illusion, if you will, that within the working class there are even more sub classes which have opposing interests. We as a working class, in reality, should have no opposing interests.

When Sharron Smith of the ISO said this:


However radical the concept of (RadFem?) patriarchy may have sounded in theory, in practice it was a recipe for passivity and divisiveness. Particularly when combined with the high degree of personalism which existed, the logic of separatism promoted fragmentation rather than unity on the basis of oppression. At the same time as it played down the immense differences which exist between women of different classes. The politics of separatism led directly to fragmentation even within radical feminist organisations. Although separatist theory argues that the main division in society is between men and women, it reduces women’s oppression to a problem of personal relationships. If that reasoning is used to understand other forms of oppression, then men are not the only oppressors: whites are oppressors, straight people are oppressors, and so forth. And many women suffer multiple forms of oppression, as victims of national or racial discrimination, or as lesbians. During the 1970s, as activism declined, radical feminist collectives became more and more fragmented and demoralised, and whole organisations became internalised and splintered along these lines. She was pointing out the manner in which some liberation movements have perverted the idea of class, in my opinion, in the same manner third worldists see first world workers as the enemy. This way of thinking eventually creates schisms within the socialist left rather than unity. Radical feminist theory (not a s a whole) and black nationalist theory being just two of the more obvious examples. It's my opinion we shouldn't unquestioningly embrace either or unquestioningly embrace any liberation movement that intentionally ignores or adds to the obfuscation of class struggle. Every socialist should be a feminist. Every socialist should be anti-racist. Every socialist should be fighting to end oppression but we shouldn't automatically be uncritical of theory just because it's goal is liberation, especially when said theory proposes that women, people of color and sexual preference become a class within themselves.






We don't? I work, have no savings, and can not survive without wages... proletariat seems like a pretty spot-on definition of my experience and where I fit into production. No, I agree with you, class should be defined via our relation to the means of production. I'm not arguing FOR a more nuanced definition of class here :)


I'm a big fan of the term and use it often in insults and have LONG before I was radical. It's not very percise or political of me, but when I get mad at someone acting snobby, somtimes it comes out. Yuppie just means young professional - sometimes we call them "Hipsters" today and when we mean a Trust-funded founder of some blog or magazine (rather than a hipster who works at a coffee-shop), then really "hipster" just means a modern "yuppie". At any rate, "yuppie" is a non-scientific description, nothing wrong with it in common speech, but it is not "a relation of production". Most yuppies are either skilled white collar workers or some kind of petty-bourgoise professional or small owner. The fundamental relations have remained, the description just is a broader and more culturally-oriented term.

As it relates to the subject at hand, on the west coast and mainly within anarchist circles Yuppie has almost become a way to describe another class in the same manner I touched on above. In fighting the oppression of gentrification the anarchists in San Fransisco ran around the Mission District smashing car windows of cars they perceived to belong to this yuppie class (I can't post video's for some reason) telling people who objected to "go back to the Marina yuppie scum". The Marina being the rich area as you know. By the classical definition of class most of these people who are moving to the Mission whilst paying higher rents are working class but since their interests collide with the more oppressed poor they have become the enemy. Certain Decolonize Oakland pamphlets even went as far as to call home ownership in general bourgeois - such has been the decay of our conception of class. I'm not defending gentrification only certain tactics employed to fight it. This to me creates schisms within the working class itself. I agree with you that the developers and city hall who give deals to their developer/speculator buddies are the real issue but don't tell that to certain anarchists in the Bay Area who have latched onto idealism like a life preserver in a storm. I wish I could give examples of what I'm talking about but can't post links for some reason.


No, the developers and city hall who give deals to their developer/speculator buddies are the real issue. If some gay workers and professionals or young white workers or professionals of a bohemian subculture move into an area, essentially they are trying to get cheap rent. A lot of resentment gets built up and I totally understand that, but it's misdirected when it's focused on the Starbucks drinker, rather than Starbucks. Capitalism always rearranges our lives and urban areas - shuffling things around to find new angles for new profits. Totally agree



Interesting, well this has been the case for a little while now - at least since the 1990s IMO. I don't use "privilege theory" but I do think it's at least a positive step forward from ID politics which did seem to cause people to obsess over "levels of oppression" and related ideas like "the multitude" further confused an understanding of both class and oppression IMO. But I think while there can be some insights from these postmodern ideas, a lot of it comes from a confusion over fundamental workings of society and the more observable effects. How we view class changes, but the fundamental relations have not really changed in my view.
I agree class is determined by our relation to the means of production but my point is this has been fogged up via various intellectuals and various liberation theory and today Marx's basic theory of class is under attack not only by capitalists but socialists.




I think the return of some class struggle and capitalist crisis internationally may be clarifying to some of these controversies. I don't believe that there has been a fundamental change in class relations, just changes on the organization and breakdown of class functions and I think this has lead to some confusion among a section of intellectuals.

"Hegemony and Socialist Strategy" is just one example but as a whole this approach (laid out in the book) has indeed affected the way we organize. It became quite apparent to me during Occupy events, specifically the conflict between Occupy and "Decolonize" Oakland. What are your views on that?

[Illegalitarian]

My understanding is that the p-b is merely someone who lives off their own labor, while not owning any mop

[Jimmie Higgins]

The things is, idealism seems to be taking over on the socialist left and yes, intellectuals and their various idealist theories seem to be at the foundation. Specifically, the tendency for many of us to sacrifice sound class analysis on the alter of identity.
I think this tendency is true, but I also think it's more of a symptom of just a left and opposition movments in general being "rusty". In general in US society, people come from idealist and liberal perspectives (most often) and radicalize from there. In addition in the absense of movements and over a generation where shop-floor style politics and rank and file organizing have declined, people are coming from a starting point of low experience, expectations, and political traddition.

In this atmosphere a lot of untested ideas may gain a hearing for just being trendy or speaking to a direct experience (like oppression) that is dismissed often in mainstream "offical politics".

Privilage theory is an example of this IMO. On the one hand as opposed to color-blind ideas or liberal post-racism/post-feminism ideas, it's a step forward that people are aknowledgeing racial or sexual inequalities and furthermore are seeing it as somehow connected to systemic things in our society. For the academic framework for these ideas I have many criticisms and I think ultimately the ideas are often inadaquate and can sometimes lead to the moralistic "check your privilage" type worry about what non-oppressed people should do. But if some local activist or worker says "male privilage" or "white privilage" but they are just talking about inequality or systemic opression, then I think it's a matter of semantics in a practical sense.

ID politics I think are similar, however, I think the political context of that set of ideas comes out of the reminants and decline of the 70s movements. Often academics that had been part of the new Left or whatnot adopted these ideas as the decline of movments meant that anti-racists, anti-sexists couldn't fight but just had to examine these phenomena and write papers on it and whatnot. I think in general (these ideas were pretty dominant when I first started getting political by the way) what was bad about this framwork - beyond maybe just not being very accurate in describing oppression in society - is that it accepted that people in society have to fight over the crumbs left to us by the capitalists. In some ways it accomodates a society of racism and sexism. There is some residue of this in privilage theories - at least in the way I've seen it play out sometimes. But I think overall that it represents the begining of a re-examination of these issues in the context of mainstream "colorblind" ideas. And in that respect it's positive and a place where we, as revolutionaries with a view that class and racial oppression are inherently linked in our societies, can try and make arguments and win some people away from some of the more academic-y views and towards arguments and ideas that will better position us all to fight against capitalism and the various forms of oppression that help keep us divided and down.


In Marx's time fighting oppression and capitalism went hand in hand. Not so much these days as a lot of people demand equal and even lopsided attention be paid to their experience with oppression outside of class struggle. Yes and I think that's what revolutionaries have to offer to these debates and in struggle: a better understanding of the fundamental working of our society and how oppression fits into that and helps prop it up.


I think the most obvious cases are some feminist theory which says women are a separate class from men with distinct class interests and another more obvious form of this mentality is black and or other minority nationalist factions in the fight against racism and or colonialism. It tends to focus purely on "oppressor class" vs "oppressed class", which in my opinion leads to greater fragmentation and even serves to compliment in lieu of abolish the divisions that capitalism creates and benefits from. It creates the illusion, if you will, that within the working class there are even more sub classes which have opposing interests. We as a working class, in reality, should have no opposing interests.True, but we can not just make the movements that we would like to see materialize out of nothing.


She was pointing out the manner in which some liberation movements have perverted the idea of class, in my opinion, in the same manner third worldists see first world workers as the enemy. This way of thinking eventually creates schisms within the socialist left rather than unity. Radical feminist theory (not a s a whole) and black nationalist theory being just two of the more obvious examples. It's my opinion we shouldn't unquestioningly embrace either or unquestioningly embrace any liberation movement that intentionally ignores or adds to the obfuscation of class struggle. Every socialist should be a feminist. Every socialist should be anti-racist. Every socialist should be fighting to end oppression but we shouldn't automatically be uncritical of theory just because it's goal is liberation, especially when said theory proposes that women, people of color and sexual preference become a class within themselves. This is all very true, but I also think we have to make a distinction of when we are arguing against ideas and then the movements where these ideas may have some sway, but could still potentially play a positive role in class struggle despite some ideological assumptions.


As it relates to the subject at hand, on the west coast and mainly within anarchist circles Yuppie has almost become a way to describe another class in the same manner I touched on above. In fighting the oppression of gentrification the anarchists in San Fransisco ran around the Mission District smashing car windows of cars they perceived to belong to this yuppie class (I can't post video's for some reason) telling people who objected to "go back to the Marina yuppie scum". The Marina being the rich area as you know. By the classical definition of class most of these people who are moving to the Mission whilst paying higher rents are working class but since their interests collide with the more oppressed poor they have become the enemy. Certain Decolonize Oakland pamphlets even went as far as to call home ownership in general bourgeois - such has been the decay of our conception of class. I'm not defending gentrification only certain tactics employed to fight it. This to me creates schisms within the working class itself. I agree with you that the developers and city hall who give deals to their developer/speculator buddies are the real issue but don't tell that to certain anarchists in the Bay Area who have latched onto idealism like a life preserver in a storm. I wish I could give examples of what I'm talking about but can't post links for some reason. No, trust me I'm well versed in some of these attitudes. But again, I think this has more to do with the "rawness" of a layer of newly radicalizing people. For them, they may have been involved in University anti-tuition increases battles or they may have just been disillusioned by graduating High School into an economy where they may have to be a service worker for the rest of their life - at any rate, in the US, the level of class anger far outstrips our experience, level of organization, and general consiousness. Because of this, many people are going to see an attraction in just moral expressions of outrage against the police or eliete businesses for "yuppies". It's class resentment and it isn't necissarily helpful, but I think if we can begin to breakthrough and if there are a series of sucessful wildcats or a Madison or Occupy type movement actually organized better or made some gains - even modest at first - then a lot of the kind of useless or misdirected efforts of people might be abandoned, or at least become less of a factor because many more people see and effective alternative.

Without this effective alternative, people who radicalize ahead of the rest of the population likely will do "something" even if it just becomes "moral witness" or some kind of induvidualist thing.

I think the example of how quickly Occupy spread, how quickly the sit-ins in the 60s revived an ailing black struggle and brought new life and a new level of radicalism to the movement, show that when people see some effective form - even modest - that addresses some of this more widespread anger and anexiety, then conditions can change quickly.


I agree class is determined by our relation to the means of production but my point is this has been fogged up via various intellectuals and various liberation theory and today Marx's basic theory of class is under attack not only by capitalists but socialists. Well this has always been the case: Marx gets appropriated by capitalist economists (who conviniently forget about the "fight" part of his thought) and reformists and so on. I think these academic ideas currently carry more weight because for the most part when you can't fight capital, people who on some level recognize that something's wrong will be drawn to that. In addition, and I think we see this on the left all the time, people have a tendency to expect some new fashionable theory or idea or tactic as a panaceia which will help the left suddenly breakthrough.

I think while struggles do sometimes take leaps and bounds, there is no real formula for it - the main thing is to try and help encourage the struggles that do happen to suceede and reach the next level politically. This might mean fighting against some theories that will divide workers or set us back, but I think it does mean trying to engage in these movements and debates if there is a potential of it developing class consiosuness, organization, and fight-back.


"Hegemony and Socialist Strategy" is just one example but as a whole this approach (laid out in the book) has indeed affected the way we organize. It became quite apparent to me during Occupy events, specifically the conflict between Occupy and "Decolonize" Oakland. What are your views on that?Well I think I pretty much agree with you politically and I don't think a lot of these ideas that you have pointed out will help us build effective class struggle, but I think where I disagree is just in the weight or importance of the ideas themselves at this point in the struggle. Since struggle is low, I think that these ideas will necissarily develop and mature and change and switch as new challenges and new conditions arise.

The CP developed in the US because of the Russian Revolution but also out of the development of the local socialist struggles of the Socialist Party's left and the IWW. The IWW itself developed out of struggles and lessons dealing with refomism in the US movement; the Socialist Party developed through a combination of small marxist groups and the local labor movements. Surges and downturns happened inbetween, but these movements developed out of experinece of struggle mostly IMO.

[Blake's Baby]

My understanding is that the p-b is merely someone who lives off their own labor, while not owning any mop

No, it's almost exactly the opposite.

It's someone who lives partly off the labour of others (through owning the means of production) but not enough to live entirely like this, who supplements this oncome with their own labour power.

Someone who owns a haulage firm, and employs 5 guys driving rigs, and also drives a rig themselves, is petit-bourgeois. Someone who owns a haulage firm and employs 40 guys to drive rigs and drives a Ferrari, is bourgeois. Someone who owns a rig, and drives it as a freelance for other people (the situation you describe), is neither petit-bourgeois nor bourgeois. He's (if this even still exists as a class any more) an 'artisan', I'd argue (no matter that in this case the product he makes is the somewhat intangible 'moving things').

[Astarte]

The "petty-bourgeoisie" are many layered, some actually being genuine 'petty-bourgeoisie' in the Marxist sense others not. The determinant factor is whether or not the small property owner exploits wage labor in the process of accruing their surplus of wealth - if their surplus is accumulated via the process of the extraction of wage labor then it is capital and they are petty-bourgeoisie or "small capitalists". If the small property owner is an independent trades-man, who does not exploit labor power but manages to accumulate some wealth (not capital though since it has not been accrued via extraction of wage labor and is not reproduced via this produce) then he is operating on a pre-capitalist mode of production similar to those which were frequent in the Italian trade-cities of the middle ages (think Marco Polo and his family). Likewise, independent artisans and craftspersons who ply their wears without exploiting wage labor may be "lumped in" with the petty-bourgeoisie by vulgar Marxists, but they are actually operating on a pre-capitalist mode of production if they exploit no wage labor. Thus, petty tradespeople, artisans and craftspeople which exploit no wage labor are operating on a pre-capitalist mode that has actually been around for thousands of years as a non-hegemonic economic type quietly operating in worlds dominated by slave, feudal, or non-European ancient modes.

[Thirsty Crow]

If the small property owner is an independent trades-man, who does not exploit labor power but manages to accumulate some wealth (not capital though since it has not been accrued via extraction of wage labor and is not reproduced via this produce) then he is operating on a pre-capitalist mode of production similar to those which were frequent in the Italian trade-cities of the middle ages (think Marco Polo and his family).
The same misconceptions get peddled here that often. This is really surprising.

Accumulating wealth as accumulating capital which has only one purpose, the struggle against competing capitals in order that this capital might employ wage labour in the future for the sake of further accumulation.

I don't get it what's so mystical and complex about it. You've got your initial money capital, buy the commodities - the means of production and materials for the labour process - work on them, and own the commodities produced which are greater in value than the initial mass. You sell them, realize the profit, no matter how small margins or the total mass of profit we're dealing with.

One would assume that this is a quite specific form of capitalist production which, when pulled off successfully, morphs owners into petite bourgeoisie proper regularly, which can mean nothing other than the fact that the means of production were used as capital, but the initial mass of it wasn't enough for this stage of self-employment to be skipped. The whole aim and purpose of it all is exactly the same as found in large capitalist enterprises. And the fact is that such people have a fundamentally different relationship to the means of production from proletarians.

Furthermore, to suggest that there are two modes of production is nonsense. Capitalism is a global mode of production which does not eradicate elements of earlier modes of production - forms of servitude and slavery for instance - but this is quite different from actually claiming that there is a second mode of production available to unemployed proletarians.

And this is the final straw. The political perspective arising from this error. Why not just push for self-employment, that way people could at least escape the capitalist mode of production.

[Astarte]

The same misconceptions get peddled here that often. This is really surprising.
Indeed, it is sad and disappointing actually.


Accumulating wealth as accumulating capital which has only one purpose, the struggle against competing capitals in order that this capital might employ wage labour in the future for the sake of further accumulation.
Unfortunately you are wrong. Petty traders and artisans "accumulate" marginal amounts of wealth simply to subsist their existence and retain autonomy over their own labor power. Many have no illusions of ever being able to convert whatever subsistence wealth they possess to continue on their shoe-string existence to capital - that is the kernel of the point - those who never do attain that "only one purpose" as you naively see it, are indeed operating on a pre-capitalist mode of production. You would do well to read http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/index.htm Of course, from a broad historical perspective, capitalist only arose when certain layers of these traders/artisans were able to rise above simple subsistence and begin employing wage labor - but the fact remains that many, upon many never did and never will, and this remains as a sort of permanent historical "under-mode" which is repeatedly marginalized in all past and present economic formations since, actually, the only real "one purpose" of it, is to perpetuate the subsistence existence of the property owner without engaging in the hegemonic mode of society.


I don't get it what's so mystical and complex about it.
Neither do I?


You've got your initial money capital, buy the commodities - the means of production and materials for the labour process - work on them, and own the commodities produced which are greater in value than the initial mass. You sell them, realize the profit, no matter how small margins or the total mass of profit we're dealing with.
Precisely, but the profit is not always enough to expand beyond subsistence existence.


One would assume that this is a quite specific form of capitalist production which, when pulled off successfully, morphs owners into petite bourgeoisie proper regularly, which can mean nothing other than the fact that the means of production were used as capital, but the initial mass of it wasn't enough for this stage of self-employment to be skipped.
Precisely, this is why it is a "pre-capitalist mode" it has the potential to be "pulled off successfully", but usually is not and remains petty trading, artisanship or craftsmanship - this is why capitalism never arose in ancient Greece or Rome, or Pharaonic Egypt, or Imperial China - in Greece and Rome the slave mode marginalized the need for an abundance of 'free labor' and in Egypt and China the centralized apparatus constantly and heavily leaned on the trading or artisan classes as to prevent them from accumulating any kind of economic power which could compete with the central economy which was based on a semi-feudal sort of state bondage of tenant farmers, or co-opted them and addended them as state-functionaries - like the state artisans which crafted the elaborate tombs of the Pharaohs or the Imperial state tradesman of China.


The whole aim and purpose of it all is exactly the same as found in large capitalist enterprises. And the fact is that such people have a fundamentally different relationship to the means of production from proletarians. Indeed they have a fundamentally different relationship to production than proletarians in that they have autonomy over their own labor power to a great extent, but often do find themselves just as exploited by large capital - debt bondage usually is the cause of their ensnarement - but the fact remains pre-capitalist small property owners are operating for subsistence and do not have the same purpose or societal function as large capital by any stretch of the imagination.


Furthermore, to suggest that there are two modes of production is nonsense.
I don't think so.


Capitalism is a global mode of production which does not eradicate elements of earlier modes of production - forms of servitude and slavery for instance - but this is quite different from actually claiming that there is a second mode of production available to unemployed proletarians.
There is though... last time I checked there are many people who are not proletarians, work for themselves, and at the same time do not exploit labor power.


And this is the final straw. The political perspective arising from this error. Why not just push for self-employment, that way people could at least escape the capitalist mode of production.
On the individual level if someone has the personal skill and knowledge to be able to subsist without selling their labor power then fine since they do have more autonomy over their own labor power than a proletarian although they are just as alienated from the surplus if they are living on a subsistence level since they cannot escape the hegemony of capital over them and will still be ensnared by forms of rentism and debt bondage. No one is suggesting that this mode become hegemonic because it never can, but it will always persist, even if technically illegalized in the form of black marketeering. Marxists should wise up a little...

[Thirsty Crow]

Indeed they have a fundamentally different relationship to production than proletarians in that they have autonomy over their own labor power to a great extent, but often do find themselves just as exploited by large capital - debt bondage usually is the cause of their ensnarement - but the fact remains pre-capitalist small property owners are operating for subsistence and do not have the same purpose or societal function as large capital by any stretch of the imagination.
As I argued against Luis Henrique in another thread, you first need to distort the notion of exploitation as used by Marx to claim that contemporary artisans are exploited, and that would necessarily ential the faulty notion of exploitation in circulation, which is essentially a confusion between ensnarement in your own words due to competition, and exploitation.

And the fact that this layer retains the autonomy over its labour power is enough to necessitate, along with the fact that their attempt at capital accumulation is doomed from the very start (you agree with me on this one; this is connected to what you claim about subsistence levels of profits) due to process other and very much different from exploitation (but that is not guaranteed as I can very much argue that small businesses were built on this dynamic), the assessment that we're dealing with a very insignifcant, and even potentially revolutionary, in certain conditions, secition of the bourgeoisie.


...and this remains as a sort of permanent historical "under-mode" which is repeatedly marginalized in all past and present economic formations since I quite agree that this can be called an "under-mode", but that is 1) theoretically unclear and unreflected term and 2) very different from the claim of a mode of production inside a global, hegemonic mode of production. This lack of clarity can be seen in the following:


the only real "one purpose" of it, is to perpetuate the subsistence existence of the property owner without engaging in the hegemonic mode of society.This is ambiguous to the core.

What does engaging in the hegemonic mode of society mean?

That the artisan does not buy and replenish the means of production as commodities? If your actually referring to such cases then yes you're quite right, but you should note that I'm not referring to any such process here.

That the artisan doesn't sell her products, which he owns as a legally recognized agent of an economic unit, in the contemporary capitalist market?

And that, flowing from the above, he doesn't engage in the hegemonic mode of human relations in capitalism - competition?

Do you see why it is ambiguous to claim what you claim here?

And on a more general level, the implications of the continued existence of pre-capitalist modes of production, as opposed to a recognition of the continued survival of certain elements of these which after all are historically transformed alongside the transformations in the dominant mode of production, are unfortunate in that concrete differences are wiped away, these being most notably the empirically evident development of artisanal production, in certain cases, towards the employment of wage labour due to in no small part the easy access to credit.

But I definitely acknowledge the ambiguous aspect to uncritically arguing that these people are simply capitalists. The fact is they don't employ wage labour after all. So, I'm mostly concerned with three things here:

1) the notion of exploitation - in its Marxist articulation and conception, it simply can't be applied to contemporary artisans (division of profits as opposed to exploitation, no matter the fact that this redivision actually eats into the earnings for subsistence; that's why I think this special layer falls unto a broader category of the petite bourgeoisie, due to the process of continued danger of proletarianization

2) capitalism as a hegemonic mode of production - implying that it is misleading to conclude, as you seem to understand due to that "under-mode" innovation, that there can be a mode of production other than that of capitalism itself which is by its nature global in extension; the persistent remanants of a bygone mode of production must be assessed in their structural position within capitalism, as part of it, and as transformed by it to a degree established by concrete analysis.

3) political perspective:

O
n the individual level if someone has the personal skill and knowledge to be able to subsist without selling their labor power then fine since they do have more autonomy over their own labor power than a proletarian although they are just as alienated from the surplus if they are living on a subsistence level since they cannot escape the hegemony of capital over them and will still be ensnared by forms of rentism and debt bondage.
They do not have only their labour power they can sell. This is not a matter of more autonomy, but that of a lack of autonomy (alienated labour) on one side, and autonomy on the other side. This, and the fact that favourable conditions enable embourgeoisment, mean that this specific layer cannot be considered as an non-ambivalent ally of the working class.

Another worrisome perspective arising from this is what I wrote but you didn't address it directly. By claiming that artisans escape exploitation and consequently that they do not engage in the hegemonic mode of society, you leave your political argument (I'm assuming that you advocate communism; as opposed to a workers' co-ops society, to nationalization under the control of the state, and so on) totally vulnerable to the objection that it is perfectly possible for workers to achieve their emancipation from exploitation by learning a craft (and subsequently of coming together in co-ops). This is an argument of deflecting class struggle.

So, to conclude, maybe a new piece of terminology is what we really need. "Subsistence capitalist" might do the trick.

[MarxArchist]

I think this tendency is true, but I also think it's more of a symptom of just a left and opposition movments in general being "rusty". In general in US society, people come from idealist and liberal perspectives (most often) and radicalize from there. In addition in the absense of movements and over a generation where shop-floor style politics and rank and file organizing have declined, people are coming from a starting point of low experience, expectations, and political traddition.



I agree with you 99.9% but here's where we enter the "controversial" part of the conversation (as far as west coast political action is concerned). I think it may be on topic in a general sense. The way these views surrounding class in relation to race/gender/sexual preference/income levels/education levels have affeced practice, namely, Occupy events on the West Coast.

Lets take a brief look at Maoist Third Wordists global class analysis. It basically puts forth a theory that first world workers are reactionary due to their privilege and the third world workers should lead the fight for communism/liberation. Is this privilege theory or a conscious distortion of proper class analysis? Was Decolonize Oakland simply working under the privilege theory framework or was it is conscious distortion of proper class analysis based in the New Left's presence in the Bay Area and should we or how do we oppose this without alienating those who organize under such an umbrella of theory/tactics? People who seem to already be quite dissatisfied with, well, a lot of basic socialist organizing tactics.

I mean, it got kinda ugly as you will recall if you were around often (which I presume you were living in EastO and all). I'm not sure we can attribute the atmosphere in question to people being rusty. The way I see it this is a decades old tradition of theory/practice. Unfortunately many of our comrades who are radical feminists, people of color and native Americans end up on one side of an invisible line and everyone else on the other side. Not saying this is the goal of the theory but is sure is how it worked out in practice. We either submit to their "leadership" or it's implied we're racist, sexist and imperialist. I'll post examples as soon as I'm able to do so on this site. Maybe this is a discussion for another thread? If so point me in that direction :)

[Astarte]

As I argued against Luis Henrique in another thread, you first need to distort the notion of exploitation as used by Marx to claim that contemporary artisans are exploited, and that would necessarily ential the faulty notion of exploitation in circulation, which is essentially a confusion between ensnarement in your own words due to competition, and exploitation.
How exactly is rentism and debt not exploitation? High interest loans that are designed to trap petty artisans and trades people into bondage to finance capital is exploitation and extraction anyway you cut it. Small shopkeepers who rent the property (property is also a type of means of production) they operate on are also exploited by rentism via landlordism - I think you are just digging yourself into a deeper hole by trying to say I am mistaking a truly coercive form with "the faulty notion of exploitation in circulation"(?) Newsflash: proletarians aren't the only class that capitalism exploits.


And the fact that this layer retains the autonomy over its labour power is enough to necessitate, along with the fact that their attempt at capital accumulation is doomed from the very start (you agree with me on this one; this is connected to what you claim about subsistence levels of profits) due to process other and very much different from exploitation (but that is not guaranteed as I can very much argue that small businesses were built on this dynamic), the assessment that we're dealing with a very insignifcant, and even potentially revolutionary, in certain conditions, secition of the bourgeoisie.
Are you joking me? If you think extraction of wealth via wage labor is the only thing that constitutes exploitation by a ruling class or capital then you are completely lost, misguided and I am not even sure why I am wasting my time on you. By your understanding of things I suppose slave labor wasn't truly exploitation? What about semi-peasants entrapped in a hacienda system of debt peonage? How about feudal serfs? Do these constitute exploited classes? I suppose it isn't really "exploitation" because its not extraction via the mechanism of wage labor, eh?


I quite agree that this can be called an "under-mode", but that is 1) theoretically unclear and unreflected term and
Maybe for you it is unclear, but you seem to have understood the concept that it implies a non-hegemonic mode of production which operates along side the hegemonic, so I guess it was theoretically clear after all.


2) very different from the claim of a mode of production inside a global, hegemonic mode of production. This lack of clarity can be seen in the following:
All hegemonic modes in history are not "global, hegemonic modes of production". That is only a modern development that really has only come with the latter half of the 19th century - I am not sure what your point in all this is, I am trying to say that petty trade has always existed in one way or another in any hegemonic system, so what difference would it really make if that economic system has become globalized or not?


This is ambiguous to the core.

What does engaging in the hegemonic mode of society mean?
Its not ambiguous at all, actually. It means it is the mode of production that the ruling class extracts the overwhelming majority of its surplus wealth from. In today's epoch that is capitalism. In medieval Europe it was feudalism. In ancient Rome and Greece it was chattel slavery. This is not to say that the ruling class does not exploit other auxiliary, sub or under-modes via alternative mechanisms than wage labor in the capitalist epoch though - in Latin America even today large fruit growing combines frequently enjoy reaping the benefits of the hacienda system of debt peonage in Latin America while selling the product in a hegemonically capitalist global economy. The Suez canal was built by French Imperialism using corvee labor - capitalism will primarily use wage labor as its choice mechanism of extraction, but it will also use other types of labor power when it can - your non-understanding of a hegemonic mode of economic production does not reflect my non-clarity in terms of theory, but rather your overwhelming ignorance of the concept of hegemonic economic modes more generally.


That the artisan does not buy and replenish the means of production as commodities? If your actually referring to such cases then yes you're quite right, but you should note that I'm not referring to any such process here.
Not sure what you are even getting at here. The trades person operates in the hegemonic capitalist economy without being a capitalist or a proletarian - I don't understand how this is so mind blowing to you - in ancient Rome landed slave owners would occasionally buy "free labor" for a wage, and the labor of those "freemen" would be contributed towards the surplus of the land slave owner who mainly derived their wealth as a slave owner, thus the ancient free laborer too operated as neither a slave or a slave owner in a hegemonically slave-based economy while at the same time being exploited by an individual who primarily accrued their surplus of wealth owing to being a member of the slave owning class - again - this isn't anything heterodox or radical, on the contrary, what is radical is your ignorance in this matter.


That the artisan doesn't sell her products, which he owns as a legally recognized agent of an economic unit, in the contemporary capitalist market?
Why wouldn't they...? They obviously function in the capitalist economy because it is hegemonic - how could they do otherwise? It is just that again, they are engaging with modern capitalism on the basis of a pre-capitalistic mode of production - again, this is nothing that mind blowing...


And that, flowing from the above, he doesn't engage in the hegemonic mode of human relations in capitalism - competition?
Personally, no, he does not exploit wage labor or have his labor exploited by the mechanism of the wage. This is not to say though, again, that the capitalist, who derives most of their wealth as in the form of wage labor does not also exploit via debt bondage and rentism as an auxiliary mechanism of extraction.


Do you see why it is ambiguous to claim what you claim here?
Um, what...?


And on a more general level, the implications of the continued existence of pre-capitalist modes of production, as opposed to a recognition of the continued survival of certain elements of these which after all are historically transformed alongside the transformations in the dominant mode of production, are unfortunate in that concrete differences are wiped away, these being most notably the empirically evident development of artisanal production, in certain cases, towards the employment of wage labour due to in no small part the easy access to credit.
Your view is too simplistic though, of course the pre-capitalist mode is "transformed" to an extent in that it is adapted to interact on the basis of capitalist hegemony, but this does not mean that at its core it does not remain as a pre-capitalist type of production in that it is exploiting no wage labor and not exploited by wage labor.



But I definitely acknowledge the ambiguous aspect to uncritically arguing that these people are simply capitalists. The fact is they don't employ wage labour after all. So, I'm mostly concerned with three things here:

1) the notion of exploitation - in its Marxist articulation and conception, it simply can't be applied to contemporary artisans(division of profits as opposed to exploitation, no matter the fact that this redivision actually eats into the earnings for subsistence; that's why I think this special layer falls unto a broader category of the petite bourgeoisie, due to the process of continued danger of proletarianization
No, this is where you are again way too simplistic and critically wrong. The capitalist ruling class has adapted other auxiliary methods besides wage extraction for exploiting and coercing petty traders and artisans - again, as I mentioned several times already before, they mainly take the form of rentism, debt bondage, and gross usury - finance capitalist and landlordism readily will engorge itself off of petty traders and artisans when it can via these mechanisms.


[/I]2) capitalism as a hegemonic mode of production - implying that it is misleading to conclude, as you seem to understand due to that "under-mode" innovation, that there can be a mode of production other than that of capitalism itself which is by its nature global in extension; the persistent remanants of a bygone mode of production must be assessed in their structural position within capitalism, as part of it, and as transformed by it to a degree established by concrete analysis.
I am having trouble following what you mean, but I believe I have addressed these points before - the old pre-capitalist forms are just slightly adapted to being readily exploitable to modern capitalism, and capital will engage in auxiliary mechanisms of exploitation besides extraction of wage labor to meet these ends.


3) political perspective:

OThey do not have only their labour power they can sell. This is not a matter of more autonomy, but that of a lack of autonomy (alienated labour) on one side, and autonomy on the other side.
No, they do have more autonomy over their own labor power in that they do not have to ask to take a shit break, or ask to take a day off - they have control over how many hours a day or week they work, the intensity of their labor (how fast or slow they want to work) as long as they are producing enough wealth to meet the demands capitalism imposes on it via rentism, debt bondage, usury, fees, bills, etc - thus as I said in my last reply, they have direct autonomy over their labor power, but they do not have autonomy over the surplus wealth they create which is indeed exploited by capitalism only through alternative methods than wage labor - you just are not understanding that these mechanisms also constitute exploitation, which is frankly wrong and quite insane.


This, and the fact that favourable conditions enable embourgeoisment, mean that this specific layer cannot be considered as an non-ambivalent ally of the working class. Favorable conditions also allow for rainbows, but guess what - they usually don't happen. As long as petty trades people and artisans are exploited by capital they are an ally of the working class ... Lenin himself understood this:


Peasants who do not employ the labour of others, who do not profit at the expense of others, will, of course, always be in favour of the land being divided among all equally, of everybody working, of land tenure not serving as a basis of exploitation; they are against the concentration of land in the hands of a few. But it is different with the kulaks and the parasites who grew rich on the war, who took advantage of the famine to sell grain at fabulous prices, who concealed grain in anticipation of higher prices, and who are now doing all they can to grow rich on the people’s misfortunes and on the starvation of the village poor and urban workers.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/nov/08.htm



Another worrisome perspective arising from this is what I wrote but you didn't address it directly. By claiming that artisans escape exploitation
Is something being lost in translation here...? I thought you were the one saying they weren't exploited - I said they weren't being exploited via the mechanism of wage labor, I have clearly, over and over, said they are exploited by rentism and debt, primarily.


and consequently that they do not engage in the hegemonic mode of society, you leave your political argument (I'm assuming that you advocate communism; as opposed to a workers' co-ops society, to nationalization under the control of the state, and so on) totally vulnerable to the objection that it is perfectly possible for workers to achieve their emancipation from exploitation by learning a craft (and subsequently of coming together in co-ops). This is an argument of deflecting class struggle.
If you still believe that at the end of reading this post you should re-read it and as well as the previous one, because I clearly said that this can never happen on the basis of capitalism owing to the fact of rentism and debt as well as other modes of exploitation capitalism employs besides wage-labor. All I said is that they have more direct autonomy over their own labor power, which they do. Their surplus is still completely exploited.


So, to conclude, maybe a new piece of terminology is what we really need. "Subsistence capitalist" might do the trick.
So to conclude, it turns out you don't actually understand what "CAPITAL"-ism means. The wealth that these trades people and artisans accumulate is not capital and never will be because it is not accrued or increased via the exploitation of wage labor... the moment one of these artisans or traders begins to exploit wage-labor they are no longer operating on a pre-capitalist basis - a qualitative change has been reach and they then have converted themselves to small capitalists - if they never reach this qualitative change they are not "subsistence capitalists" or any kind of "capitalist" whatsoever. Period.

[MarxArchist]

deleted in the name of space...sorry
From the Anarchist Library- I can't post links

Marxists frequently resort to dismissive and/or scurrilous accusations. One of the most enduring is the charge that anarchism in and of itself is a petit-bourgeois — they sometimes also add individualist here — ideology. Marx’s correct analysis of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s economic Mutualism as petit-bourgeois is the source of this dismissal; a nearly total absence of Proudhon’s economic ideas among anarchists for the last 150 years, however, has made the continual use by Marxists of this century-old analysis seem silly.

Proudhon and Property

Proudhon, the father of modern anarchism, was a fan of private property, but not the sort that generates capital without labor. For Proudhon (as well as other socialists), real estate speculation, money lending at interest, and trading in stocks and bonds were considered unsavory because there was no actual physical work put into them. This is what he meant when he famously wrote “Property is Theft.” Proudhon’s People’s Bank, along with the romanticized pastoralism of small-scale (cottage) industry and agriculture, were the hallmarks of his anti-statist social vision. Exchange of goods and services directly between the producers and consumers was to be the basis of a free and fair economy; prices or exchange values were to be negotiated and determined by the producers and consumers themselves without the interference of bankers, economic planners, or other experts and bureaucrats. That’s what he meant when he less-famously wrote “Property is Liberty.” Writing as Marx’s contemporary in the mid-nineteenth century, Proudhon was reacting to the fitful implementation of industrialism and its accompanying process of proletarianization, finding fault with its centralizing and monopolizing tendencies. Marx and Engels (et al) found in that centralization the perfect mechanism for the creation of a self-conscious class, a revolutionary subject capable of expropriating the Means of Production once they (both the class and the means of production) became fully developed. Proudhon believed that the proletarianization of former peasants and ruined shopkeepers would only create a mass of alienated and submissive workers.
What is a petit bourgeois? In economic terms it refers to a small businessperson, someone who is either self-employed, works only with members of her/his family, or has a handful of employees; a shopkeeper. The petit bourgeois may hold the title to her store, but the bank holds the mortgage; the petit bourgeois may or may not dislike neo-liberal globalization, and may grumble about the injustice of monopoly capitalism, but this is only a complaint about a particular organization of capitalism — the petit bourgeois is still a capitalist, relying on the exchange of commodities for a profit, however small. In Marxist slang (because of the Marxist assertion that economic status determines one’s socio-cultural ideology) it’s also used to describe a certain mentality that accompanies the precarious and self-centered economic status of the person whose relationship to the Means of Production is not the same as that of the big bourgeois (large landowner, banker, boss). In class terms, the bourgeois is in constant conflict with the proletarian; the petit bourgeois can take either side, but more often than not comes down against the proletarian as well. If the historical mission of the proletariat is to expropriate the private property and social wealth of capitalists, then the petit bourgeois will ultimately remain loyal to the regime of capitalism, private property, and the state.
The petit bourgeois is stereotypically small-minded, parochial, conformist, acquisitive, stingy, and easily swayed by demagoguery. Populism (characterized by anti-intellectualism; the scapegoating of easy/abstract targets; charismatic yet approachable leaders, and the promotion of small-scale capitalism) is often the typical expression of petit-bourgeois politics.

[Astarte]

From the Anarchist Library- I can't post links

Marxists frequently resort to dismissive and/or scurrilous accusations. One of the most enduring is the charge that anarchism in and of itself is a petit-bourgeois — they sometimes also add individualist here — ideology. Marx’s correct analysis of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s economic Mutualism as petit-bourgeois is the source of this dismissal; a nearly total absence of Proudhon’s economic ideas among anarchists for the last 150 years, however, has made the continual use by Marxists of this century-old analysis seem silly.

Proudhon and Property

Proudhon, the father of modern anarchism, was a fan of private property, but not the sort that generates capital without labor. For Proudhon (as well as other socialists), real estate speculation, money lending at interest, and trading in stocks and bonds were considered unsavory because there was no actual physical work put into them. This is what he meant when he famously wrote “Property is Theft.” Proudhon’s People’s Bank, along with the romanticized pastoralism of small-scale (cottage) industry and agriculture, were the hallmarks of his anti-statist social vision. Exchange of goods and services directly between the producers and consumers was to be the basis of a free and fair economy; prices or exchange values were to be negotiated and determined by the producers and consumers themselves without the interference of bankers, economic planners, or other experts and bureaucrats. That’s what he meant when he less-famously wrote “Property is Liberty.” Writing as Marx’s contemporary in the mid-nineteenth century, Proudhon was reacting to the fitful implementation of industrialism and its accompanying process of proletarianization, finding fault with its centralizing and monopolizing tendencies. Marx and Engels (et al) found in that centralization the perfect mechanism for the creation of a self-conscious class, a revolutionary subject capable of expropriating the Means of Production once they (both the class and the means of production) became fully developed. Proudhon believed that the proletarianization of former peasants and ruined shopkeepers would only create a mass of alienated and submissive workers.
What is a petit bourgeois? In economic terms it refers to a small businessperson, someone who is either self-employed, works only with members of her/his family, or has a handful of employees; a shopkeeper. The petit bourgeois may hold the title to her store, but the bank holds the mortgage; the petit bourgeois may or may not dislike neo-liberal globalization, and may grumble about the injustice of monopoly capitalism, but this is only a complaint about a particular organization of capitalism — the petit bourgeois is still a capitalist, relying on the exchange of commodities for a profit, however small. In Marxist slang (because of the Marxist assertion that economic status determines one’s socio-cultural ideology)[/B] it’s also used to describe a certain mentality that accompanies the precarious and self-centered economic status of the person whose relationship to the Means of Production is not the same as that of the big bourgeois (large landowner, banker, boss).[/b] In class terms, the bourgeois is in constant conflict with the proletarian; the petit bourgeois can take either side, but more often than not comes down against the proletarian as well. If the historical mission of the proletariat is to expropriate the private property and social wealth of capitalists, then the petit bourgeois will ultimately remain loyal to the regime of capitalism, private property, and the state.
The petit bourgeois is stereotypically small-minded, parochial, conformist, acquisitive, stingy, and easily swayed by demagoguery. Populism (characterized by anti-intellectualism; the scapegoating of easy/abstract targets; charismatic yet approachable leaders, and the promotion of small-scale capitalism) is often the typical expression of petit-bourgeois politics.

That's all real cute, but a small property owner who does not exploit wage labor is still not a capitalist in anyway - the wealth they use and reap from commodity production is not capital - it is wealth - if you believe they are capitalists in any way, then you might as well also say the Persian trades peoples who went to and fro between ancient Persia and Greece were also "Capitalists" which is ridiculous. Also, for Marxists one's role in production determine's class and political alignment. What makes a petty bourgeois precisely "bourgeois" is their role as the buyer of labor power as a commodity - something which artisans and crafts people simply do not do.

[Thirsty Crow]

How exactly is rentism and debt not exploitation?Because the term, when applied to capitalism, refers to the appropriation of surplus value in production, and not to a redivision of profits which is the basic mechanism of financial capital (this form of capital depends on the extraction of surplus value in another economic unit).


High interest loans that are designed to trap petty artisans and trades people into bondage to finance capital is exploitation and extraction anyway you cut it.
Only if you widen the scope of the term exploitation.

That would mean that, for instance, capitalists exploit other capitalists through exchange, as this view necessitates the conclusion that even, say, medium sized capitalist companies are subject to financial exploitation.


I think you are just digging yourself into a deeper hole by trying to say I am mistaking a truly coercive form with "the faulty notion of exploitation in circulation"(?) Newsflash: proletarians aren't the only class that capitalism exploits.
Exploitation is not the same as a "coercive form". You mistake the unique way the proletariat is exploited for the effects of competition and profits redivision.


Are you joking me? If you think extraction of wealth via wage labor is the only thing that constitutes exploitation by a ruling class or capital then you are completely lost, misguided and I am not even sure why I am wasting my time on you. By your understanding of things I suppose slave labor wasn't truly exploitation? What about semi-peasants entrapped in a hacienda system of debt peonage? How about feudal serfs? Do these constitute exploited classes? I suppose it isn't really "exploitation" because its not extraction via the mechanism of wage labor, eh? You do not understand the difference I pose here, between the notion of exploitation in production, and your mercantilist view of exploitation in exchange.

I think that in all historical class societies, exploitation was located in production, with the differences being enormous, in relation to the mode of exploitation, and in the social and political consequences.

The whole point is that an onwer of her own labour power who simultaneously owns the products of her labour as commodities to be sold in capitalism cannot be possibly exploited since the modern working class, the proletariat, is exemplary in its situation in capitalism, in its position as the class producing what another class appropriates under specific conditions (labour power as commodity), and this practice is taken as a referent of the term exploitation.

The situation is starkly different with your artisan.


All hegemonic modes in history are not "global, hegemonic modes of production".

I haven't claimed otherwise. It would be best if you refrained from attributing things to me I never said.


That is only a modern development that really has only come with the latter half of the 19th century - I am not sure what your point in all this is, I am trying to say that petty trade has always existed in one way or another in any hegemonic system, so what difference would it really make if that economic system has become globalized or not?
The point is that petty trade, petty manufacture, doesn't constitute a "mode of production".


Its not ambiguous at all, actually. It means it is the mode of production that the ruling class extracts the overwhelming majority of its surplus wealth from.

Surplus wealth, you say.

Try dealing with the social form which this wealth takes on.


in Latin America even today large fruit growing combines frequently enjoy reaping the benefits of the hacienda system of debt peonage in Latin America while selling the product in a hegemonically capitalist global economy.

I'm not referring to this here. As I clearly stated, I'm referring only to artisans as legally recognized owners of their labour power and the products of their labour as commodities. I understand the phenomenon you describe as being a form of contemporary slavery (more or less; no need for detailed account here since it is clear that I'm not talking about such phenomena). You're arguing against a straw man.


The Suez canal was built by French Imperialism using corvee labor - capitalism will primarily use wage labor as its choice mechanism of extraction, but it will also use other types of labor power when it can - your non-understanding of a hegemonic mode of economic production does not reflect my non-clarity in terms of theory, but rather your overwhelming ignorance of the concept of hegemonic economic modes more generally.
To be most brief, "using other mechanisms of extracting surplus value" does not equal "there are other modes of production within capitalism". At least when my understanding of the term is concerned, and that is again to be brief, the capitalist mode of production is hegemonic in that it transforms elements of previous hegemonic relations between the working classes and the appropriators of their product. This is clearly seen in modern slavery which performs another social function than in, for instance, ancient Athens.


The trades person operates in the hegemonic capitalist economy without being a capitalist or a proletarian - I don't understand how this is so mind blowing to you

The evident lack of discussion on the basic mechanism of capital accumulation in the case of the artisan (not debt slave) - owner of her own labour power (as anyone else), but also the owner of the means of production as commodities and finally the owner of the product of labour as commodities -and in the end, the seller, realizing the value produced. This picture lacks wage labour, and this is the frankly confusing thing about modern artisans, that their social function is both proletarian and capitalist at the same time.



Personally, no, he does not exploit wage labor or have his labor exploited by the mechanism of the wage. This is not to say though, again, that the capitalist, who derives most of their wealth as in the form of wage labor does not also exploit via debt bondage and rentism as an auxiliary mechanism of extraction.I said what I had to say about real debt bondage.

I'm primarily concerned here with the self-employed artisan in the developed capitalist economies where this problem is most sharply posed, without interference by the horrid practices such as debt bondage.

In this sense, it is entirely impossible to claim exploitation of any kind and use the Marxist articulation of the term. That is what I'm driving at.



Your view is too simplistic though, of course the pre-capitalist mode is "transformed" to an extent in that it is adapted to interact on the basis of capitalist hegemony, but this does not mean that at its core it does not remain as a pre-capitalist type of production in that it is exploiting no wage labor and not exploited by wage labor.
But you were arguing some posts above that the artisan does not engage in the dominant mode of society. Now, this production, which bears all the characteristics of capitalist production with the significant difference being the lack of wage labour, is adapted to interact on the basis of capitalist hegemony. This is clearly self-contradictory.

And furthermore, I suspect that you confuse the two aspects of the notion of production.
The first aspect is a kind of an integral one, most notably found in the notion of the "mode of production", which refers to the unity of the whole of the social organization - including production proper, then exchange, distribution, and consumption, and which also includes the production of the very social relations which act as the basis of it all. This is why I object to the idea of capitalism co-existing with other "modes of production" as I think it would be far more accurate to say that wage labour co-exists with other modes of exploitation.

The second aspect is production "proper", that stage of the whole process preceeding that of exchange and consumption, being its basis in fact.

I should have made this distinction way sooner and way clearer so we wouldn't keep misrepresenting the views of one another.


but they do not have autonomy over the surplus wealth they create which is indeed exploited by capitalism only through alternative methods than wage labor - you just are not understanding that these mechanisms also constitute exploitation, which is frankly wrong and quite insane.
To reiterate, I'm not referring to debt bondage.

And again, to be clear, in no way does finanical capital in the form of interest exploit artisans. This is a redivision of profits. Not exploitation.

Favorable condition


I have clearly, over and over, said they are exploited by rentism and debt, primarily.
Not every form of debt is tantamount to exploitation. As I've said, outside the forms of debt bondage, we're talking about a relationship between a capitalist and another capitalist enterprise, thus, a redivision of profits. Any kind of exploitation occurs only in production (a debt peon is of course exploited just as the slave was), and the fact that this might eat away all the profits of our artisan during a given time doesn't change this fact.

And finally, it is not the surplus that is exploited. Labour power is. I honestly don't know where this confusion about exploiting the surplus comes from. The relationship between a commercial bank and an artisan is exactly the same as with the same bank and a medium sized enterprise with the obvious difference that in the case of the former there is no wage labour hired. Of course, the consequences of this relationship of financial interest are quite different due to the size of capital and the size of the workforce. I can't see what's controversial about that. Probably all the profits obtained, in a given period, from the sale of commodities will be forwarded for the reimbursement of the loan. But that is not the same either as the case with debt bondage, antique slavery, feudalism, and wage labour. Or are we all exploited by first our capitalist employers, then by financial capital in the form of cedit cards, then by the state through taxes (what are taxes other than an "exploitation of the surplus")?

You basically assume that the relationship between financial capital and the artisan is the same as that between productive capital and wage labour. That assumption enables the argument that debt is a form of exploitation. But as I said, this assumption is contradicted first by you claiming that artisans are not wage workers. It is another matter that you believe, erroneously, that lending money was an exploitative practice in pre-capitalist social formation. It was not, though it surely participated in the productive process described as the first aspect above, as exploitation was in those societies also centered on production "proper" - serfs were exploited due to them being bonded to land and a part of their product being recquisitioned by the lord and the church, while the slave was a "tool" on her own, a piece of property.

And of course, you're being quite disingenuous when I ask about competition:


Personally, no, he does not exploit wage labor or have his labor exploited by the mechanism of the wage.Keep in mind that I'm not talking about debt bondage.

That being said, you're evading the question. Instead of addressing what I asked, you shift debate to what apparently you want to address. Though, that doesn't engage the contention that competition is the hegemonic form of human relationship in capitalism (not the only one, to be clear), and the way individual owners are affected by it - or actually not since you claim that they escape the hegemonic mode of society, whatever that meant.




Also, for Marxists one's role in production determine's class and political alignment. What makes a petty bourgeois precisely "bourgeois" is their role as the buyer of labor power as a commodity - something which artisans and crafts people simply do not do.
The relationship to the means of production is defined according to ownerhsip or non-ownership.

Thus a capitalists owns the means of production , while the wage worker owns only her own labour power. This is exactly the same as the situation with our artisan.

The crucial difference, which does not mean that the embarrasing cop-out of a reference to a pre-capitalist mode of production (essentially disregarding what the term mode of production actually means, and that is the unity of the different spheres of production proper, exchange, distribution and consumption) is anyting other than a cop-out, is the lack of hired wage labour.

[Astarte]

Because the term, when applied to capitalism, refers to the appropriation of surplus value in production, and not to a redivision of profits which is the basic mechanism of financial capital (this form of capital depends on the extraction of surplus value in another economic unit).


Only if you widen the scope of the term exploitation.

That would mean that, for instance, capitalists exploit other capitalists through exchange, as this view necessitates the conclusion that even, say, medium sized capitalist companies are subject to financial exploitation.

Exploitation is not the same as a "coercive form". You mistake the unique way the proletariat is exploited for the effects of competition and profits redivision.

You do not understand the difference I pose here, between the notion of exploitation in production, and your mercantilist view of exploitation in exchange.

I think that in all historical class societies, exploitation was located in production, with the differences being enormous, in relation to the mode of exploitation, and in the social and political consequences.

The whole point is that an onwer of her own labour power who simultaneously owns the products of her labour as commodities to be sold in capitalism cannot be possibly exploited since the modern working class, the proletariat, is exemplary in its situation in capitalism, in its position as the class producing what another class appropriates under specific conditions (labour power as commodity), and this practice is taken as a referent of the term exploitation.

The situation is starkly different with your artisan.



I haven't claimed otherwise. It would be best if you refrained from attributing things to me I never said.

The point is that petty trade, petty manufacture, doesn't constitute a "mode of production".



Surplus wealth, you say.

Try dealing with the social form which this wealth takes on.


I'm not referring to this here. As I clearly stated, I'm referring only to artisans as legally recognized owners of their labour power and the products of their labour as commodities. I understand the phenomenon you describe as being a form of contemporary slavery (more or less; no need for detailed account here since it is clear that I'm not talking about such phenomena). You're arguing against a straw man.


To be most brief, "using other mechanisms of extracting surplus value" does not equal "there are other modes of production within capitalism". At least when my understanding of the term is concerned, and that is again to be brief, the capitalist mode of production is hegemonic in that it transforms elements of previous hegemonic relations between the working classes and the appropriators of their product. This is clearly seen in modern slavery which performs another social function than in, for instance, ancient Athens.



The evident lack of discussion on the basic mechanism of capital accumulation in the case of the artisan (not debt slave) - owner of her own labour power (as anyone else), but also the owner of the means of production as commodities and finally the owner of the product of labour as commodities -and in the end, the seller, realizing the value produced. This picture lacks wage labour, and this is the frankly confusing thing about modern artisans, that their social function is both proletarian and capitalist at the same time.


I said what I had to say about real debt bondage.

I'm primarily concerned here with the self-employed artisan in the developed capitalist economies where this problem is most sharply posed, without interference by the horrid practices such as debt bondage.

In this sense, it is entirely impossible to claim exploitation of any kind and use the Marxist articulation of the term. That is what I'm driving at.

But you were arguing some posts above that the artisan does not engage in the dominant mode of society. Now, this production, which bears all the characteristics of capitalist production with the significant difference being the lack of wage labour, is adapted to interact on the basis of capitalist hegemony. This is clearly self-contradictory.

And furthermore, I suspect that you confuse the two aspects of the notion of production.
The first aspect is a kind of an integral one, most notably found in the notion of the "mode of production", which refers to the unity of the whole of the social organization - including production proper, then exchange, distribution, and consumption, and which also includes the production of the very social relations which act as the basis of it all. This is why I object to the idea of capitalism co-existing with other "modes of production" as I think it would be far more accurate to say that wage labour co-exists with other modes of exploitation.

The second aspect is production "proper", that stage of the whole process preceeding that of exchange and consumption, being its basis in fact.

I should have made this distinction way sooner and way clearer so we wouldn't keep misrepresenting the views of one another.
To reiterate, I'm not referring to debt bondage.

And again, to be clear, in no way does finanical capital in the form of interest exploit artisans. This is a redivision of profits. Not exploitation.

Favorable condition

Not every form of debt is tantamount to exploitation. As I've said, outside the forms of debt bondage, we're talking about a relationship between a capitalist and another capitalist enterprise, thus, a redivision of profits. Any kind of exploitation occurs only in production (a debt peon is of course exploited just as the slave was), and the fact that this might eat away all the profits of our artisan during a given time doesn't change this fact.

And finally, it is not the surplus that is exploited. Labour power is. I honestly don't know where this confusion about exploiting the surplus comes from. The relationship between a commercial bank and an artisan is exactly the same as with the same bank and a medium sized enterprise with the obvious difference that in the case of the former there is no wage labour hired. Of course, the consequences of this relationship of financial interest are quite different due to the size of capital and the size of the workforce. I can't see what's controversial about that. Probably all the profits obtained, in a given period, from the sale of commodities will be forwarded for the reimbursement of the loan. But that is not the same either as the case with debt bondage, antique slavery, feudalism, and wage labour. Or are we all exploited by first our capitalist employers, then by financial capital in the form of cedit cards, then by the state through taxes (what are taxes other than an "exploitation of the surplus")?

You basically assume that the relationship between financial capital and the artisan is the same as that between productive capital and wage labour. That assumption enables the argument that debt is a form of exploitation. But as I said, this assumption is contradicted first by you claiming that artisans are not wage workers. It is another matter that you believe, erroneously, that lending money was an exploitative practice in pre-capitalist social formation. It was not, though it surely participated in the productive process described as the first aspect above, as exploitation was in those societies also centered on production "proper" - serfs were exploited due to them being bonded to land and a part of their product being recquisitioned by the lord and the church, while the slave was a "tool" on her own, a piece of property.

And of course, you're being quite disingenuous when I ask about competition:

Keep in mind that I'm not talking about debt bondage.

That being said, you're evading the question. Instead of addressing what I asked, you shift debate to what apparently you want to address. Though, that doesn't engage the contention that competition is the hegemonic form of human relationship in capitalism (not the only one, to be clear), and the way individual owners are affected by it - or actually not since you claim that they escape the hegemonic mode of society, whatever that meant.




The relationship to the means of production is defined according to ownerhsip or non-ownership.

Thus a capitalists owns the means of production , while the wage worker owns only her own labour power. This is exactly the same as the situation with our artisan.

The crucial difference, which does not mean that the embarrasing cop-out of a reference to a pre-capitalist mode of production (essentially disregarding what the term mode of production actually means, and that is the unity of the different spheres of production proper, exchange, distribution and consumption) is anyting other than a cop-out, is the lack of hired wage labour.

Honestly, I was going to reply to you again on this, but I'm going to go ahead and not instead because I see that you really refuted nothing nor added any new information that is actually relevant or pertinent. I am not interested in watching you chase your tail in circles over what the linguistical orthodoxy of "exploitation" on a solely capital/wage labor in a vacuum base entails, so I am going to allow my last two replies to stand. Anyone who reads this thread can decide for themselves. All I have to say is, yes petty artisans and traders are still operating on a "pre-capitalist" economic basis while at the same time being yoked and coerced by capital.

[MarxArchist]

That's all real cute, but a small property owner who does not exploit wage labor is still not a capitalist in anyway - the wealth they use and reap from commodity production is not capital - it is wealth - if you believe they are capitalists in any way, then you might as well also say the Persian trades peoples who went to and fro between ancient Persia and Greece were also "Capitalists" which is ridiculous. Also, for Marxists one's role in production determine's class and political alignment. What makes a petty bourgeois precisely "bourgeois" is their role as the buyer of labor power as a commodity - something which artisans and crafts people simply do not do.
Can post links now :) Take it up with them:
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lawrence-jarach-proudhon-s-ghost-petit-bourgeois-anarchism-anarchist-businesses-and-the-politic

[Luís Henrique]

Because the term, when applied to capitalism, refers to the appropriation of surplus value in production, and not to a redivision of profits which is the basic mechanism of financial capital (this form of capital depends on the extraction of surplus value in another economic unit).

Except, of course, it doesn't. Exploitation is a term that covers more that this in Marxist theory.


That would mean that, for instance, capitalists exploit other capitalists through exchange, as this view necessitates the conclusion that even, say, medium sized capitalist companies are subject to financial exploitation.

No - because the redivision of surplus value among different capitalists leads to the levelling of profits towards the average rates. If banks make money at the expense of capitalist factories, and such profit has a higher rate than the average, capital will move from industry to finance, thus lowering the competition in the former and increasing it in the later, prompting the reequalisation of profits in both sectors.

Nothing similar happens concerning the exploitation of petty bourgeois artisans, traders, and peasants by capital proper: the petty bourgeois simply have not the means to transfer their "capital" (between quotes because it is not actually capital) to other sectors and reequalise the rate of profits. On the contrary, the transfer of value from the petty bourgeois to the bourgeoisie knows only one limit, which isn't the average profit rate, but the subsistence level of the petty bourgeois and their petty means of production.


You do not understand the difference I pose here, between the notion of exploitation in production, and your mercantilist view of exploitation in exchange.

Here you go again, calling people "mercantilists" out of your own lack of comprehension of both reality and Marxist theory.


The whole point is that an onwer of her own labour power who simultaneously owns the products of her labour as commodities to be sold in capitalism cannot be possibly exploited since the modern working class, the proletariat, is exemplary in its situation in capitalism, in its position as the class producing what another class appropriates under specific conditions (labour power as commodity), and this practice is taken as a referent of the term exploitation.

Mkay. You want the word "exploitation" to have a certain very specific meaning, while the rest of the world, Marx included, uses it in what you call a "mercantilist" fashion. That's your privilege - but is not Marxist theory, orthodox or otherwise; it is merely a quirk of yours, or of your use of language.

Now let's see how things happen in reality.

I have worked with petty bourgeois peasants back in 1986, in Santa Cruz do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.* They were planters of tobacco, typical peasants who owned their own land and their instruments of labour. They planted tobacco and sold it to an olygopsonic cartel of four capitalist companies: British American Tobacco (under its Brazilian fantasy name of "Souza Cruz"), J. J. Reynolds, Lygett Myers, and Sudan. Those companies fixed prices among them, and would not deviate from them, thus in practice acting as a single buyer facing a multitude of several thousand sellers. This allowed them to push the prices down. They also colluded with chemical companies producing agrochemicals (fertilisers, inseticides, herbicides): they would not accept and buy tobacco from peasants who would not provide the fiscal documents proving they had bought specific chemics produced by specific companies (Pfizer, Manah, etc.) Then on top of all that, banks lent money to those peasants, forcing them to mortgage their small properties. The result was huge profits for banks, tobacco industries, tobacco wholesale merchants, and chemical industries - and a quite low living standard for the peasants.

When one of them explained me the situation, I obviously asked what they could do to reduce competition among themselves and consequently rise the prices. He answered, "there is a black list; if you sell tobacco for J.J. Reynolds but then try to sell it to Souza Cruz too, they will refuse it, blacklist you, and communicate the fact to the other companies, who will then all blacklist you; in practice, you have to quit the tobacco trade". To which I asked, "but isn't that an option"? and he retorted, "yes, but the only other cultures around here are maize and potato**, and neither have good markets, so your living standards go even lower if you take such option".

You may not like to call all of this "exploitation"; but I call it exactly that, and am not changing my wording to fit your peculiar semi-Marxist terminology. Nor I think any sensible person would: it looks like exploitation, it sounds like exploitation, it smells like exploitation.


The point is that petty trade, petty manufacture, doesn't constitute a "mode of production".

According to Marx, they do:


Usurer's capital employs the method of exploitation characteristic of capital yet without the latter's mode of production.

And what other mode of production would that be?

Luís Henrique

* Evidently, this was 27 years ago, so it is possible that the market situation in the region has changed. But it wasn't a quite peculiar situation; José Vicente Tavares describes similar practices in the region around Caxias do Sul, regarding wine factories and grape producers - mitigated, of course, by the fact that the wine companies were much smaller and consequentley less oligopolistic than the tobacco mammoths that plagued Santa Cruz do Sul.

** That may, indeed be the origin of the popular Brazilian expression "vá plantar batatas" (literally, "go plant potatoes", but is used as a more polite way to say someone to go fuck themselves): if you don't like our tobacco prices, go plant potatoes, and see what happens to you.