• MendingBenjamin [they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I switch accounts once a month or so. Guess I’ll switch to an older one. Being white isn’t petty bourgeois. That’s not the point. Some relevant quotes from Settlers that should explain the point better (TLDR at the bottom):

    This one on the myth of false equivalence between poor whites and black slaves:

    The mythology of the white masses pretends that while the evil planter and the London merchant grew fat on the profits of the slave labor, the "poor white" of the South, the Northern small farmer and white worker were all uninvolved in slavery and benefited not at all from it. The mythology suggests that slavery even lowered the living standard of the white masses by supposedly holding down wages and monopolizing vast tracts of farmland. Thus, it is alleged, slavery was not in the interests of the white masses.

    And then these accounts of the colonial class character during the American Revolution:

    The Euro-Amerikan class structure at the time of the 1775 War of Independence was revealing:

    • 80% bourgeois & petit-bourgeois:
      • 10% — Capitalists: Great Planters, large merchants, etc.
      • 20% — Large farmers, professionals, tradesmen & other upper-middle elements.
      • 40% — Small land-owning farmers
      • 10% — Artisans: blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, shipwrights, etc.
    • 15% — Temporary workers, usually soon moving upwards into the ranks of the small farmers
    • 5% — Laborers

    Not only was the bourgeois class itself quite large, but some 70% of the total population of settlers were in the various, propertied middle classes. The overwhelming majority were landowners, including many of the artisans and tradesmen, and an even larger portion of the Euro-Amerikans were self-employed or preparing to be. The small "poor" element of lumpen and permanent laborers was only 5% of the settler population, and without influence or cohesion in such a propertied society.

    The plantation areas, which were obviously the most dominated by a small elite owning a disproportionate share of the wealth, showed no lesser degree of general settler privilege and unification. South Carolina was the state with the highest degree of large plantation centralization; yet there, too, no settler working class development was evident. The South Carolina settler class structure shows only an intensification of the same bourgeois features evident at the national level:

    • 86% bourgeois & petit-bourgeois
      • 3% — Great Planter elite (above 1,000 acres landholding)
      • 15% — planters (500-999 acres)
      • 8% — merchants & shopowners
      • 5% — Professionals
      • 42% — Middle & small farmers (under 500 acres)
      • 10% — Artisans
    • 14% — Laborers (majority only temporary)

    When we speak of the small, land-owning farmer as the largest single element in settler society, it is important to see what this means. An example is Rebecca Royston of Calvert County, Maryland, who died in 1740 with an estate worth 81 £ (which places her well in the middle of the small-medium farmers). That sum represented the value of 200 acres of farmland, 31 head of cattle, 15 of sheep, 29 pigs, 1,463 lbs. of tobacco stored for market, 5 feather beds, 2 old guns, assorted furniture, tools and kitchen utensils, and the contract of an 8 year-old indentured child servant. No wealth, no luxury, but a life with some small property, food, shelter, and a cash crop for market. Certainly a far reach upwards from the bitter, bare existence of the colonial Afrikan proletariat (or, for that matter, the British or French proletariat of the period).

    TLDR Read Settlers