Re: Forwarded from Anthony (on fascism)

["ÁÎ×Ó¹â Henry C.K.Liu ¹ù¤l¥ú" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx wrote:

> "Workers World, Chicago Bureau" wrote:
>
> > >No, the petty bourgeoisie are
> > >(fundamentally) exactly that: small businesspeople (with farms, shops,
> > >etc.).  On the one hand, they have little real power in society and are
> > >oppressed and driven out of business by the big bourgeoisie.  On the >other
> > >hand, their "social being" as far as their livelihoods is concerned is 
> > >>tied
> > to the market; they dream of becoming large bourgeois; they exploit >labor
> > >when possible, although they don't have the capital to exploit very >many
> > >laborers.
>
> True. I agree with your definition of petty bourgeoisie. My point was that, in
> the final analysis, petty bourgeois is a *bourgeois* by virtue of his/her 
> class
> position. S(he) is not a proletarian. A petty bourgeois is not separated from
> the means of production as a worker is. Marx says in the Manifesto that petty
> bourgeois fluctuates  between proletariat and bourgeoisie and "ever rebelling
> itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society" and adds that "as modern
> industry develops they will completely disappear as an independent section of
> modern society; to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by
> overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen".

The term "bourgeoisie" was originally the name for freemen in a French medieval
market town (bourg).  It has gradually been extended to include the middle 
class of
France.  The term has a cultural meaning in France that perhap is not fully
transferable to other countries.  In the Enuropean feudal social structure, the
bourgeoisie dominated the Third Estate, which included all social elements not
classified as clergy (First Estate) or nobility (Second Estate).  It was the 
basis
of class representation in the French Estate-General.  In ancient history, the
bourgeoisie, defined as the mercantile or trading class (non-producers who 
trade as
intermediaries for profit), was regulated by Hammurabi's law code in 2100 B.C.
Solon, Pericles and Demosthenes were bourgeois spokesmen in ancient Greece.  A 
Roman
bourgeoisie flourished in Rome until the economic collapse of the empire in the 
3rd
century.  The boiurgeoisie was revived with the commercial revolution at the 
end of
the Middle Ages.  Under monarchism, the bourgoisie found it in their interest to
promote the central power of the throne against the declining chaos of local 
feudal
authorities.  In the 17th-18th centuries, the bourgoisie shifted their support 
to
constitutionalism and natural right against divine rights, and against 
aristocratic
and church privileges. They fought for freedom from feudal trammels and royal
encroachment on personal liberty and rights to trade and of property.  In the 
19th
century, triumphantly propounding liberalism, the bourgeoisie gained political
rights as well as religious and civil liberties. Modern industrial democracies 
in
its political and cultural aspects are rooted in bourgeois values, so 
effectively
satireed by Moliere.  Bourgeois political ascendancy was buttressed by economic
preeminence, ushered by the Industrial Revolution.  The Industrial Revolution 
gave
class a new meaning and a new dimension.   Bankers and Industrialist became high
bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie was tradesmen and white collar workers.  
Peasants
remained peasants until they were dispossed of property.  By the end of the 19th
century, wealth centrification trends limited capitalists to high bougeoisie
membership. In industrial societies, the proletariate is a class of exploited
workers and wage earners who depend on their labor power for means of survival. 
 In
ancient Rome, proletarians were a property-less class.  They swelled the ranks 
of
the army and a powerful source of political and social instability.  Marx 
identified
the proletariate as those propertyless class from dispossed farmers and 
retainers
without assured income in industrial societies.  This is the definition used in
Chinese revolutionary politics.  The key is propertyless, not just the nature of
work.  By that defition, American workers, with their pension funds invested in
stock markets, are not members of the proletariate.  American Labor fights for
better pay and working conditions the same way American executives do or 
capitalists
fight for better returns on capital.  Therin lies the counter-revolutionary
character of American Labor.

Louis O. Kelso (1913-1991) who wrote  "The Capitalist Manisfesto", was the 
father of
Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs).  He developed ideas on helping people 
gain a
"second income" from capital to supplement their income from labor. Kelso was 
not
taken seriously by professional economists during his lifetime. As envisioned by
Kelso, the ESOP involves three different targets he identified as obstacles to
achieving democratized capital ownership: the Corporation, the Government, and 
the
Credit system.
The modern corporation, by retaining some or all of its earnings for future
expansion, both attenuates the
rights of capital owners to receive all wealth produced by their property, and 
also
aggravates the concentration of wealth by placing the value of newly created 
capital
directly into the hands of existing
shareholders.
Government policy, in the absence of ESOPs, tends both to encourage earnings
retention by corporations (as a way of sheltering from personal income taxes 
what
would otherwise become shareholder income), and discourage significant 
transfers of
capital holdings to capital-less workers by levying taxes on such transfers.
The Credit system makes capital acquisition nearly impossible by requiring
collateral self-insurance in
most cases, which restricts borrowing for acquisition of capital to the few who
already own significant
capital estates.
Kelso also proposed that the Federal Reserve's money-creation power could be
harnessed directly to the needs for new capital, channeling low interest credit 
to
new enterprises, provided that the stock ownership of these companies was
distributed broadly among workers and communities and indeed to all citizens.
Instead of merely buying government securitites when it creates money, the Fed 
would
also buy the debt paper of employee-owned or community owned trusts which 
financed
new capital formation.  In time, true economic democracy will result.  It seems 
to
be a far superior idea than allowing Social Security Trust Funds to invest in 
the
stock market.

Economic democracy, though higly desirable, is not the path to socialism.  It 
is the
path to socialized capitalism.

Henry