[lbo-talk] The SMB in a socialist economy?

[Alan Rudy]

> WS:
>
> > Small business is the central and much revered icon of American
> > popular mythology - another one is the military. I see it as a
> > mixture of populist anti-intellectualism and xenophobia.
>
> Doug:
>
> >And self-reliance. Emerson still lives.
>
> Gulick:
>
> Right, and let's not overlook the fact that today's small business worship
> and other forms of petty bourgeois populism can trace their roots (at
> least in part) to the "hard work + thrift = Godliness" memes, motifs, and
> themes prevalent in the various anti-Church of England Protestant sects.
> It's easy to forget this in a deracinated, commercial media-saturated
> age, when in the popular mind "WASPS" are loosely associated with today's
> Northeastern Corridor/Left Coast upper class secular liberalism (of the
> cultural if not political sort), not the bible thumping of the Midwestern
> and
> Southern commonfolk.
>

JG, while utterly ensconced within the fly-over states, and sure you're
being ironic, surely you've not forgotten how much of the Real America
resides in SoCal, the Central Valley, and Eastern WA and OR?  At the same
time, because of its atheoretical small:good :: big:bad approach, the hard
work + thrift + godliness terrain of populism swings "left" and "right"
based on who the big-and-bad-of-the-moment are - NOT because of some memetic
(neologism?), motif-ated (oy, it gets worse), or thematic essence to
populism.  Or, at least, that's my take... you saw Virg Bernero with his
"left" populism attacking Faux-news-guy right?  No theory, just righteous
anger...