hey chapos. i have a few plans for what my future could be. long story short if I can't get into a university in china i will open a restaurant here in amerikkka to get by and do something i enjoy (cooking). how would i achieve this without becoming the petty bourgeoisie, or at least if i have to be the petty bourgeoisie how could i betray may class and further communist goals in amerikkka? any advice would be appreciated.
Make it a co-op after it is established. Joint ownership by the workers.
The issue is that if he does this, he has to compete with all the other restaurants around him that doubtless have a much more brutal approach to surviving in the market. I think the failure rate for small businesses is 70% within ten years—because we are in the imperialist stage of capitalism where you only really find any kind of success by exporting capital to the global south. Generally it's just the big businesses that have the resources to do that, although I've heard stories of tech bros taking advantage of imperialism to hire virtual assistants in Pakistan to do all their coding for them in Silicon Valley (WFH before WFH), so imperialism can also work directly for labor aristocrats sometimes.
My dad worked as a chef in restaurants for decades and I also worked as a dishwasher in them for a few years. All of the owners I worked for were bastards, but the one who was the least psychotic gave up, sold everything, and moved away within ten or fifteen years, complaining (as the petite bourgeoisie always does) that he couldn't make any money. He opened two restaurants which were obviously the best for hundreds of miles in every direction—perfect food, service, prices, atmosphere, you name it. He was nice to his workers, cooked them free dinners every night, and paid them in full and on time. And he was driven out. Almost all the food around here is terrible and the owners are some of the most unbearable people I have ever encountered in my life. Plenty of them are libs, too. I don't think having a restaurant in America (whether it's a worker co-op or not) is a good idea. You can be the best of the best and still have an excellent chance of failing. It is also amazingly stressful, and as an owner it requires you to be working more or less every waking moment indefinitely.
Restaurants in particular are the worst of all out of that 70% because margins are so razor-thin.
It’s almost as though all restaurants should be consolidated into one big restaurant run by workers who drive out the mom-and-pop owners who were terrorizing them.
This is great analysis of this. The restaurant industry is held up by stimulant addicted assholes. If you're not a stimulant addicted asshole, your restaurant will probably fail.
This is certainly a possibility, but the opposite can also happen. It really depends on where you live and probably also on luck.
My owner didn’t run as a co-op but a “good” lib and is still in business, with nice, long-term employees etc. And yeah, she does everything from dishwashing to cooking to serving depending on what’s needed. It’s also mostly women, queer and bipoc people which is super cool.
As Richard Wolff points out often, most business fail, but co-ops have a higher chance of succeeding than any other model.
To OP, organise it as a co-op (if you legally can, there might be hurdles), but make sure to have profit-sharing, cross-train people so everyone can do multiple jobs, have equal power/voting etc. The core thing to remember when you think/make decisions is to NOT EXPLOIT PEOPLE. Your business cannot be a way for you to get rich at the expense of your employees. Either everyone at the business gets rich, or no one does.
In addition to Richard Wolff, whose videos you can watch on YouTube to learn more about co-ops and Marxism in general, you can also look up Madeline Pendleton on Tiktok. She actually runs a successful business as a socialist, and has for the past decade. It’s astonishing to see the kinds of challenges that you have to face but also how, if you actually care about your principles, you can legit have something straight out of a socialist future in the present.
Have to admit, that video is pretty interesting. It seems like that’s pretty much the best you can do in our capitalist/imperialist/settler colonial hellscape short of revolution.
This has to be done carefully because it may violate the terms of the business loan. Best to have a proper up-front plan.