[lbo-talk] meanwhile, the US working class......

[Michael Dawson]

Of course it's ironic and kind of stupid.  But this is the most heavily
indoctrinated society in human history, and we've always lacked an
organized, big-time left.  Hence, the upper half of the working class dreams
of small business, while the lower half plays the lottery.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Yoshie Furuhashi
> Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 8:25 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org; furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
> Subject: [lbo-talk] meanwhile, the US working class......
> 
> >snit snat wrote:
> >
> >>Also, does anyone know the numbers of desire for small business
> ownership?
> >
> >I got it from Reeve Vanneman and Lynn Weber Cannon's The American
> >Perception of Class (e.g., pp. 86-87). They argue that the petty
> >bourgeois aspirations (their phrase, not mine) of the U.S. working
> >class don't necessarily reflect a lack of class consciousness -
> >they're aware of getting screwed by the boss - but "self-employment
> >- however remote a possibility - seems to offer a more realistic
> >chance to escape from working-class subordination than does a
> >socialist transformation."
> >
> >Doug
> 
> Being self-employed in the United States must be tougher than being
> self-employed in Europe, Canada, or Japan, as the US doesn't offer
> universal health care.  Do American workers aspire to be small
> business owners more than European, Canadian, and Japanese workers
> do?  If so, there is an interesting contradiction: the petty
> bourgeois aspiration is the most prevalent in a country where being
> petit bourgeois is tougher than most comparable countries.
> --
> Yoshie
> 
> * Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> * "Proud of Britain": <http://www.proudofbritain.net/ > and
> <http://www.proud-of-britain.org.uk/>
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