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?

  • s0ykaf [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    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

    • Pezevenk [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      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.