>>Not if they live off the profits, no. But the sort of shopkeepers I'm referring to live off the value created by their own work. They may have no employer, but they will often have a landlord and a financial capitalist exploiting their labour.
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>>It all gets back to essence. You seem to be tripping over details, like the legal form of exploitation and lack of freedom.
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>>As for how they vote, that is so obviously irrelevant to their objective class that I need not bother addressing it.
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>Ah the false consciounsess defense. I'd always thought that how a group thinks and acts politically was pretty important to its definition, but maybe I've fallen too deeply under the corrupting influence of postmodernists.
The other way around I think. Material circumstances are, in general, the basis for how people think. But it isn't a fixed and immediate relationship. When the circumstances of a capitalist changes and s/he drops into the working class, their class consciousness doesn't automatically snap into conformity. It might take a generation or more for people to adapt.
I know a couple of capitalists who retain their working class consciousness. For example they put a lot of store in making sure their employees are paid the right wages, they treat them like human beings and are loyal to them. Basically, they retain their working class solidarity even though they aren't objectively working class anymore. But when someone has spent their whole life working in a factory, they don't just abandon the habits of a lifetime.
But class consciousness eventually catches up with objective class conditions. However I think it is less logical to expect that the work the other way around, as you suggest. Your material class circumstances won't change just because you conceive of yourself as a capitalist.
You certainly can't define people as capitalist or working class merely because they think they are one or the other. That has no place whatsoever in the definition
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>Yes of course small shopkeepers have to contend with landlords, financiers, and big capitalists. They also have to contend with workers who may slack on the job while demanding higher pay, and with environmental, labor, and other regulations. They're stuck in the middle, which is why they've been called middle class or petit bourgeois. If your notion of essence is so essential that it obscures the difference betweeen a fry cook at McDonald's and someone who owns a small restaurant, then I'd say your notion of essence is useless.
My son used to work at McDonalds and I have a friend who owns a small restaurant. My friend the restaurateur doesn't make enough money to get off welfare (she's a single parent.) She set up the restaurant about 3 years ago, employs a cook and some waiting staff of course, as well as working there herself. But her cook makes more money than her, and my son the fry cook at Maccas never had to stay on welfare to supplement his income. I don't see it as logical to define her as a capitalist. Maybe she will be one day, but it hasn't happened yet and class needs to be defined in accordance with what is, not what might be or wishful thinking.
Your notion of class places too much store in form and obscures substance. Many restaurateurs are petit bourgeois (small capitalists in English), but that doesn't mean that all restaurateurs are capitalists.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas