Yeah, there’s certainly a fair petite bourgeois population among farmers, but I think you overestimate its size. Many farmers might own the land… if it weren’t still under morgage to the bank. The tractor is almost certainly also still on loan from the dealership since the same “trade in for new, better equipment” scam is as prevalent there as it is for personal vehicles. The corn and especially soybeans aren’t something that can be sold directly at scale (farmers’ markets can only support so much) unlike dairy which you can theoretically turn to regional groceries for – you’re selling to one of a small number of processors and aggregators, and if they decide they don’t need as much as you sold them last year you’re left scrabbling for something to do with a lot of worthless product. At the end of the year, most of the profit has gone right back to the financiers rather than to the farmer themself.
The evident situation is different for a farmer than for a factory worker, but tenant farmers are proletarian, and modern commercial farming is often closer to tenant farming than it’s advertised as being. The financial systems nowdays (especially around farming) are set up to give the trappings of small business ownership, without the degree of self-determination that came with that status back when the foundational theory was being written.
You’ve basically defined all business owners as working class if they rent their storefronts or owe money to a bank.
But a small business owner that pays rents or loans is still not selling their labor to someone else. They own the full surplus value of their labor and then can use the profits they generate from their business to pay rents and loans. That’s the key difference. The fact that petite bourgeoisie are at the whims of the big bourgeoisie does not actually change the fact that their class interests align against the working class. There’s a reason farmers, like all small business owners, are so reactionary and anti-worker and anti-tax and anti-regulation and pro-business.
EDIT All that said? Your argument is actually the basis for Yanis Varoufakis’s technofeudalism theory. As he explains it, rents are triumphing over profits and so the feudalists (banks, tech firms) are able to capture business owners into loans and rents and feudal market places where they are unable to generate profits anymore. They’re still not working class, but more like wealthy landed peasantry paying taxes to their fief. That would actually open up opportunities for alliances between workers and farmers, because class antagonisms have changed.
I disagree. They’re petite bourgeoisie and their class interests are still aligned with the ruling class, and the “feudalists” are just monopoly capital, but it’s an interesting theory. I recommend reading the book, it’s not that long.
Yeah, there’s certainly a fair petite bourgeois population among farmers, but I think you overestimate its size. Many farmers might own the land… if it weren’t still under morgage to the bank. The tractor is almost certainly also still on loan from the dealership since the same “trade in for new, better equipment” scam is as prevalent there as it is for personal vehicles. The corn and especially soybeans aren’t something that can be sold directly at scale (farmers’ markets can only support so much) unlike dairy which you can theoretically turn to regional groceries for – you’re selling to one of a small number of processors and aggregators, and if they decide they don’t need as much as you sold them last year you’re left scrabbling for something to do with a lot of worthless product. At the end of the year, most of the profit has gone right back to the financiers rather than to the farmer themself.
The evident situation is different for a farmer than for a factory worker, but tenant farmers are proletarian, and modern commercial farming is often closer to tenant farming than it’s advertised as being. The financial systems nowdays (especially around farming) are set up to give the trappings of small business ownership, without the degree of self-determination that came with that status back when the foundational theory was being written.
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You’ve basically defined all business owners as working class if they rent their storefronts or owe money to a bank.
But a small business owner that pays rents or loans is still not selling their labor to someone else. They own the full surplus value of their labor and then can use the profits they generate from their business to pay rents and loans. That’s the key difference. The fact that petite bourgeoisie are at the whims of the big bourgeoisie does not actually change the fact that their class interests align against the working class. There’s a reason farmers, like all small business owners, are so reactionary and anti-worker and anti-tax and anti-regulation and pro-business.
EDIT All that said? Your argument is actually the basis for Yanis Varoufakis’s technofeudalism theory. As he explains it, rents are triumphing over profits and so the feudalists (banks, tech firms) are able to capture business owners into loans and rents and feudal market places where they are unable to generate profits anymore. They’re still not working class, but more like wealthy landed peasantry paying taxes to their fief. That would actually open up opportunities for alliances between workers and farmers, because class antagonisms have changed.
I disagree. They’re petite bourgeoisie and their class interests are still aligned with the ruling class, and the “feudalists” are just monopoly capital, but it’s an interesting theory. I recommend reading the book, it’s not that long.