>Small producers like farmers and small distributors like corner grocers are
>simply small capitalists.
This is such a vague assertion. What do you mean by "small"? If you include self-employed, contractors etc who employ no one else in their business within this definition, then you would be quite wrong.
The small shop-keeper or other small business operator who employs only their own labour (along with perhaps immediate family members) is not a capitalist in any meaningful way simply by virtue of their "ownership of the means of production". This is intuitively obvious when the operators of such businesses must rely on their own labour to make a living. If you want to get all hung up on the niceties of "ownership of the means of production" making the capitalist, then you only need to take a hard look at whether or not such owner operator businesses even own any such means of production in a meaningful way.
Technically, legally, perhaps they have ownership. But often a close look at the balance sheet of such a business would reveal that such title is weighed against significant non-current liabilities, such as a bloody great mortgage or two.
"Ownership" of the means of production? Forget it, most owner operated businesses are a form of disguised slavery even more oppressive than that suffered by wage workers. That is when the "assets" (mortgaged or otherwise) can even be considered part of the *socially necessary* means of production to begin with.
To illustrate what I mean, I'll use the example of the Bracknell General Store. It was a small grocery store, newsagency and general merchandise store here in the sleepy (OK, comatose) village of Bracknell Tasmania. Been operating for over 120 years So I understand. Anyhow, the middle aged proprietor lived on the premises along with his wife and they owned and between them staffed the store about 10 hours a day, 7 days a week 363 days a year.
I don't know what their turnover was, but as far as I could tell they weren't registered for GST, which any private business with a turnover of more than $50,000 PA was legally obliged to be. (Mind you, I never once saw them ring up a purchase on their cash register either, so it wouldn't be easy for the Tax office to pin down exactly what their turnover was. I doubt they would know themselves for sure. But all the same, they would still have to leave some kind of paper trail in the *purchase* of stock, so the real business couldn't have been terribly much in excess of $50K PA.)
They had the business (and attached residence) on the market for a couple of years, but couldn't get any takers, so last year they simply closed it and renovated the storefront as part of the house. Now the house is up for sale, sans general store. Here it is, for anyone interested:
The lesson, basically, is that the business that they owned could not, in the present day, be considered part of the "means of production and exchange" in a socially necessary or useful way. Its more analagous to ownership of a hand loom. Sure, a few hundred years ago a hand loom was a meaningful part of the means of production. But not now. Likewise a small general store is redundant technology and ownership of one will no more make you a capitalist in the year 2007 than ownership of a hand loom would make you a capitalist.
You might as well consider a bricklayer who owns a trowel and a wheelbarrow to be a capitalist, on the basis that he owns his own "means of production."
You could go into this a lot deeper, with lofty analysis of all the technical terms, but there's no point. Its intuitive that if you have to work for a living, whether for a boss or as a self-exploited owner operator, then you ain't no capitalist. Small or otherwise. You're simply working class.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas