Re: [Marxism] MLause on Clarifying the term "petty bourgeoisie"?

[Rdkrnstdt@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 8/12/2004 9:57:16 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
OK, Marx quotes about artisans, right?  

What happened after he wrote these things--and it was well under way in
his day?  Say a widgetmeister, three journeymen and a couple of
apprentices.  Then Heinz Ford creates the widget assembly line.
Factories.  No more master widgetmakers with their little shops.
While there is no doubt the petit-bourgeois have shrunk numerically as a 
result of the process indicated by MLause, they are nonetheless still extant as 
a 
class and a numerically significant one.

In my posting citing Marx' description of the PB, I attempted, successfully I 
think, to take the category from the realm of sociological insult to that of 
economic description.  The petit-bourgeois is, again, that person who works 
alongside the hired labor, adds value to the product and who reaps 
surplus-value 
from those who have been hired by hir.  I gave as formula for the value of 
hir's product 

              l + c + v + s

as opposed to the bourgheois capitalist's commodity value of

               c + v + s

The difference, obviously, is the l which is equal to the total value added 
by the PB (what would be hir's  v + s, if hir worked for someone else).  And 
this indicates the fundamental (class) difference between the PB and the 
bourgeois which is simply that the size of his capital accumulation does not 
(yet) 
permit hir to retire from the workforce and live solely upon the fruits of that 
accumulation.

"As for the additional comment by Comrade: MLause
The historic "petty bourgeoisie" has snuffed it.  This specific thing
Marx was writing about is about as useful as his advice to the Frankfort
Congress.  Quotable for literary purposes, perhaps, but no longer of
direct and immediate use."

I ask if that is so then to what class designation would hir assign

    1.  The barber with two chairs who leases out the second for a fixed rate 
or a share of each cut?  The gardener with two lawn mowers   
        who does the same, etc?  The restaurant owner or the last of the 
dying breed, the corner drug store owner.

    2.  The small industialist or retailer who must go to work every day 
because hir has not (yet) acquired the means to hire someone to take hir's 
place 
as 'master and commander' on hir's ship of dreams and whose contribution to the 
value added could be reckowned simply by a quick check of the equilibrium 
market value of the person who hir could hire to replace hirself.  Yes!  Quotes 
from Marx:

        
âOn the one hand, all labour in which many individuals co-operate necessarily 
requires a commanding will to co-ordinate and unify the process, and 
functions which apply not to partial operations but to the total activity of 
the 
workshop, much as that of an orchestra conductor. This is a productive job, 
which 
must be performed in every combined mode of production.â[1]

            "The industrial capitalist is a worker, compared to the 
money-capitalist, but a                     worker in the sense of capitalist, 
i.e., an 
exploiter of the labour of others. The wage             which he claims and 
pockets for this labour is exactly equal to the appropriated                 
quantity of another's labour and depends directly upon the rate of exploitation 
of this l           labour, in so far as he undertakes the effort required for 
exploitation; it does not,                 however, depend on the degree of 
exertion that such exploitation demands, and                 which he can shift 
to a manager for moderate pay. After every crisis there are                   
  enough ex-manufacturers in the English factory districts who will 
supervise, for low             wages, what wore formerly their own factories in 
the 
capacity of managers of the                 new owners, who are frequently 
their 
creditors.[2]



I could go on...

There is no doubt that this is a class who history is passing by but who 
nonetheless is still being passed and a correct analysis of the relationship of 
forces requires and begins first with a correct analysis of class.


[1] Karl Marx.  âCapitalâ. Vol 3.  Chap XXIII.  p 383.  International 
Publishers.  New York.  1967.  To be found at Marxist Internet Archives @ 
www.marxists.org\archive\marx\works\1894-c3\ch23.htm
 
[2] Ibid. p 387    
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