sure bezos is individually more disgusting than the sympathetic local restaurant owner who asks you how your mom is when he greets you in person, but he doesn't exist simply as an individual: he exists collectively, inside a CLASS
and when the time comes for a truly socialist transition that guy and his class friends are gonna be just as reactionary as any billionaire
not only that, but whatever they lack in financial power individually, they certainly compensate in sheer numbers
so why is it that i often see criticism directed at china being followed by It even has billionaires! as if they would have any less trouble if that property was instead in the hands of a few thousand petty bourgeois
i can't help but feel like this is a vestige of a liberal interpretation of how society works sneaking into the thought of a socialist transition
just imagine what would've happened if instead of kidnapping jack ma the CPC had to kidnap, say, 10,000 store owners how the fuck is that not just outright worse
they're even harder to control as they're constantly flying under the radar - in fact, this is expressed even in china's foreign policy as smaller businesses are by far more guilty of exploitative practices in underdeveloped countries than the larger businesses like huawei
what am i missing here?
Capital owned by the petite bourgeoisie is qualitatively different from capital owned by the bourgeoisie, just as it is different between the higher and lower echelons of the bourgeoisie. Whether this difference is meaningful is a matter of interpretation, considering we are here comparing the actual existing world with one that is pretty unplausible.
I guess the specific criticism of China that they have billionaires is kind of strange, considering it implicitly seems to advocate for a version of capitalism that does not produce billionaires, which does not exist.
Capital owned by the petite bourgeoisie is qualitatively different from capital owned by the bourgeoisie
certainly the reaction from the bourgeoisie would be different, precisely because their capital has a different nature - but i'm arguing it wouldn't be any more dangerous, maybe even less
if you nationalize, say, alibaba, you will face a reaction from, for instance, international investors - but i'm skeptical of the idea this would be any worse politically and economically than collectivizing a given amount of small businesses that are equivalent to even 10% of alibaba's output (in fact, i think it would be easier to do the former)
so a part of me actually thinks consolidation of property, as long as you're able to maintain the monopoly on force and it doesn't have a direct effect on the livelihood of workers (such as their ability to have a home), is preferable to having less wealth (not income, wealth) inequality
I guess the specific criticism of China that they have billionaires is kind of strange, considering it implicitly seems to advocate for a version of capitalism that does not produce billionaires, which does not exist.
true
The bourgeoisie and the petite bourgeoisie are not the same thing and don't always have the same interests.
I don't understand what the weird kidnapping shit is about lol
don’t always have the same interests
even people in the same class don't always have the same interests, i don't see how this is particularly relevant as what matters is the general description of class ideology
and generally speaking, at least regarding brazilian small business owners, when paulo guedes speaks they get just as excited as would any banker with 500 million R$ in assets
the only time i ever see a petty bourgeois not being an extreme counter-revolutionary is when their business is doing so bad that their income goes low enough for them to prefer being salaried workers, which is exceedingly rare
I don’t understand what the weird kidnapping shit is about lol
it's supposed to be an example of the political effects of pressuring a member of the bourgeoisie
even people in the same class don’t always have the same interests, i don’t see how this is particularly relevant as what matters is the general description of class ideology
No. Petite bourgeois and bourgeois don't have the same CLASS interests. That is why they are not the same class. They are all over the place and they change according to circumstance.
not saying china doesn't have both, i'm just asking why focus on billionaires and not just private property in general - small and large - if your issue is capitalist practices and risks for the transition
At least in the west, the distinction between small and large capitalist isn't very useful because the small ones are usually just subcontractors to large ones. I don't know whether it's like this in China too.
to use a somewhat bad example for the lack of a better one, when the need for collectivization came, stalin faced equal wrath from all owners of land, regardless of how large their property was
There was a great piece in Jacobin about how the modern reactionary movement in America is entirely funded by individual business owners that range from Charles Koch all the way down to like car dealership owners, and their success is because they are the most powerful individuals in the country - anything larger or more successful than what they own is divvied up among shareholders who are by their nature unorganizable; which I think kind of reinforces your take.
I think there are some fine gradations between store owner (og petit bourgeoisie), and for example restaurant owner. One can very well be self-emancipated worker owning its own means of production, the other one will have to employ people (or is likelier)