unions

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Aug 11 14:53:28 PDT 2002


Carrol Cox wrote:


>Dddddd0814 at aol.com wrote:
>>
>> petty-bourgeois (i.e., start their own small businesses,
>> etc.)
>
>Yes. Yes. Yes. Misuse of the term "petty bourgeiois" is an almost fatal
>disease of the thought of too many leftists. Replacing it with "petty
>producer" is a beginning for clearing up confusion. There are three
>classes in the U.S.
>
>Capitalists
>Workers
>Petty Producers
>
>The term "middle class" is an infallible giveaway of moralistic or
>otherwise muddled political thinking.

Feeling rather ex cathedra today, are you?

So where in your schema do you fit self-employed professionals (e.g., doctors in private practice, who are now plagued by HMOs, but who still don't want to be socialized) or middle managers (who both boss and are bossed, and can vacillate between identifying as worker or exec)? Some people *are* in the middle in the power sense (and not merely the income sense).

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list