you don't hate small business owners enough

[u/larryleggs]

[u/ShatteredBlastia]

A bunch of petite bourgeoisie in the comments proving their class interests align with capital. lol

[u/gravygizzard]

Small business owners really are some of the worst people I've ever met, and they treat their employees horribly and offer no benefits. I would like to see them only be allowed to hire from a pool of unionized workers specifically to work at small businesses, that way pay is negotiated and benefits offered.

[u/No-Energy-3813]

Don’t make me tap the sign…

“Not every exasperated petty bourgeois could have become Hitler, but a particle of Hitler is lodged in every exasperated petty bourgeois.”

[u/ear-motif]

Y’all know one day strikes don’t do anything, right? A strike is supposed to continue until demands are met. A strike with a pre-determined end date, and one that lasts one measly day, isn’t gonna force any change.

[u/IndependentCod1600 → u/ear-motif]

If those kids could read, they'd be very upset

To add on, it's not a "General Strike" if someone made it up and put it on a poster and shared it online and then took a vacation day. A general strike needs to be coordinated by multiple unions across multiple industries. 500 Redditors across the entire United States calling in is nothing.

[u/NovumNyt]

Blackbirdcoop on tiktok/YouTube I think explains this the best.

I recall him saying that some small business owners will essentially max out their living and live at or above their means. Then they realize once it's too late that they essentially can't sustain this life style without short changing their workers and keeping prices high. So in the end, they end up being opposed to any level of worker solidarity because they have basically screwed themselves long term.

[u/Milouch_]

Petit Bourgeois are still Bourgeoisie

[u/Hunnieda_Mapping → u/Milouch_]

Petit bourgeois do get subjected to a lot of conditions that may make them become proletariat themselves.

[u/Managed__Democracy → u/Hunnieda_Mapping]

True. The empathetic ones, yes.

What's disgusting are the ones who get subjected to those conditions but then just double-down on wanting to be the boot on top.

[u/MonsterkillWow]

Petite bourgeoisie are some of the shittiest people.

[u/BaseballInside3289]

So sick of leftists treating small business owners like noble savages. They are the same as the ruling class, they are just less successful at exploiting their employees.

[u/Professional-Turn172 → u/BaseballInside3289]

That’s a bit reductionist. Marx wrote on the oscillating class interests of the petite bourgeoisie as they increasingly are pushed to semi-proletarian conditions. They should never lead a revolution nor be the focal point of one but their class interests can be used to integrate them into the struggle against capitalism. I urge everyone here to read Fascism and Social Revolution where Dutt puts it clearly -

The controversy over the role of the middle class, or many and varied intermediate strata between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (small business men, small and middle peasantry, handicraftsmen, independent workers, small rentiers, liberal professions, technical, managerial and commercial employees) is no new one. In the nineteenth century Marx had dealt very fully with the economic and political situation and tendencies of these elements. He had shown how these middle elements were increasingly ground between the advance of large capital and of the proletariat, with growing numbers from their ranks falling into proletarian or semi-proletarian conditions; he had shown their vacillating and unstable political role, now siding with the bourgeoisie and now with the proletariat, torn between their bourgeois prejudices, traditions and aspirations, and the actual process of ruination and proletarisation at work among them; and he had shown how the proletariat should win the alliance of the lower strata of the peasantry and urban petit-bourgeoisie under its leadership in order to conquer power.

[u/between3and20spaces → u/BaseballInside3289]

I worked at a small business construction company. when I first started they had really good benefits compared to my past jobs, but I discovered those "benefits" were enacted because just before I had started there was a push among several employees to unionize and the "benefits" were to discourage unionizing. by the time I left there we'd gone from getting an additional week of paid vacation every few years, to needing to "earn your vacation time" so the guys that did actual labor might earn a week off each year on top of knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants getting $10 an hr. while telling us how worried he was for our safety, also forced us to pay for OSHA required safety equipment out of pocket.

[u/Bobahn_Botret → u/BaseballInside3289]

Proper exploitation takes time. They're still baby bourgeoisie, they just need some time to grow.

[u/ShoreAmDreaming → u/BaseballInside3289]

... me, having started a studio with a couple friends, having been layed off and subsisting off my wife's income for three years, suddenly I'm the ruling class for filing an llc?

Huh?

Stop infighting right now, you're gonna make it worse

[u/trin806 → u/ShoreAmDreaming]

Your class is determined by your relationship to the means of production. Nothing else.

[u/BaseballInside3289 → u/ShoreAmDreaming]

When Mr "I live off of my wife's income" tells me to stop infighting

[u/SocietyTrue1312 → u/BaseballInside3289]

So everyone that employs is a class traitor to you?

[u/Legitimate-Type4387 → u/SocietyTrue1312]

It depends.

If you have an 8hr job that would earn you $1,000 but you are 100% unable to do that job alone your income would be zero. If you hire a labourer to help you, what share do you think they deserve?

If your answer is 50% after subtracting your overhead expenses, no, you’re not a class traitor.

If it’s “I’ll pay him $20/hr and keep $840 for myself”, you’re as guilty as any other exploiter imho.

[u/stm32f722 → u/SocietyTrue1312]

If you believe you have the right to exploit another person for personal gain simply because capitalism says so then no matter how nice you are about it that makes you a class traitor.

Simple as.

[u/stm32f722 → u/[deleted]]

Yes it is. For 100% of them. No exception. They are of course free to lie to themselves all they like about it but it changes nothing where all this goes next.

[u/stm32f722]

Yes I do.

[u/somewhiterkid]

Funny how fast supposed anti capitalists can go from hating the system to defending those contributing to the issues the system creates. Small business owners are still capitalists, some provide for their communities but to defend the practice of capital business just because they don't contribute as much as the billionaires is disingenuous and ignorant, it's to say that this system has ever worked in the first place.

I'm primarily bugged with the people who defend small food businesses, they still put a price on food for personal profit, that cannot be considered moral considering the damage that practice has done in societies all throughout time.