The Ideology of Small Business
Owning your own small business is the gateway to the American dream and within the dominant narrative, the small businessman's stature is nothing less than heroic. Like becoming a farmer, anybody can join the productive property owning class with nothing more than a vision and a large loan. You will be celebrated as the backbone of our economy and a moral exemplar endowed with traits of diligence, frugality, efficiency and ambition. John Boehner will actually cry just thinking about you!
One wonders how many small businessmen or farmers were in that crowd cheering when Michael Moore called for taxing the rich? How about bailing out the banks? It's a tricky class position, described well by Samuel Bowels and Herbert Gintis in their book Democracy and Capitalism:
"The fact that most populists were themselves property owners perhaps immunized them to socialist appeals, but it made them no less radically opposed to the railroads and the banks."
They are talking about Reconstruction but the same social dynamics are still in play as we imagine each citizen can become an equal player by acquiring private property. Of course to Jefferson, looking out at a vast new continent inhabited by savages, this seemed perfectly reasonable, and his Virginia Constitution, in a socialist turn, advocated "Every person of full age..shall be entitled to an appropriation of 50 acres."
In our day and age you don't get an appropriation, you find a business for sale or come up with your own plan. You go down for a subsidized business loan and get tax incentives and capital gains breaks and some of Ayn Rands glow washes over you as you realize you are now a member. Perhaps you will not be invited to Davos right away, but you can dream. Michael Moore mocked that dream, noting it's illusory nature rather than it's inspirational qualities, and this is the tension within liberalism. He believes in the Dream, if only...banks and greedy people and heartless, corrupt politicians and corporations and bad judges and the military-industrial complex, etc, etc. would get out of the way.
Populist fervor is spreading and the incredible Naomi Klien got an hour on Democracy Now to relate this all to her Shock Doctrine. I shouldn't be such a spoiler since this is the first glimmer of revolt but I fear the stinking Democrats will co-opt all the energy.
posted by troutsky @ 7:24 AM
9 comments
9 Comments:
Of course they'll co-opt it. Why? Because socialism is their natural home. They have themselves been co-opted. The thing about Democrats is they realize they are acting under serious obstacles which restrain them from moving full speed ahead. Not the least of these obstacles is the constitution.
That's why just recently, no less a prominent Democrat than Jesse Jackson Jr, now an Illinois Congressman, advocated changing the Constitution to make a job, housing, and health care a constitutional right.
In other words, a Democrat, on the floor of the House, has advocated amending the document which was intended to limit the power of the federal government, by giving the federal government greater powers over everything and everybody.
In a nutshell, this is the Democrat Party philosophy, and has been since at least the days of Roosevelt, and maybe even since the days of Wilson, though not as obviously.
And they will keep on and on, until the federal government, if they have their way, will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party, and the ultimate arbiter of all aspects of American life, from Main Street to Wall Street, from the schools to the workplace, from the public sphere to the private home.
If I were a Christian, I would say we are living in the end times, and I'm not really sure we're not.
Don't start with these Constitutional rants. It is virtually neutral on the subject of regulation and never uses the word except in the 2nd amendment and the right wing goes bonkers over that one while lecturing us on what they think the Constitution means.
And you have to tell me just what there is about The Black Bush that you find radical. His desire to stop heating oil assistance? Just what is it.
I'm reasonably sure we are living in very drastic times. Kultur may well be correct on this matter but one thing I do know, if you think that a bunch of competing actors all scheming for an advantage as we destroy coopertaion and community for the sake of the free market (LMFAO) and the Full Ayn Rand then you lost the road, Pagan.
Oh, when did Jesse Jackson Jr. become prominent? They even told him to go screw when it came time for the Senate seat appointment.
The only reason they told Jesse Jackson Jr to fuck off for the Senate seat was because a, Obama wanted to appoint one of his toadies, and b, he was wary of appointing a black man that early in his term, cos he was afraid of those evil tea-bagging racists and what they might say.
Deny it all you want to Ducky, but Democrats are big government fanatics, if not outright socialist. I always said they were Stalinist Lite. Ask yourself, which of the two parties believes in top down government. The EPA, the FDA, etc, etc.
Democrat=Stalinist-Lite. End of story.
End of story, ducky, you read it here. Pagan has been injecting some of that elixer that took Huckabee to Kenya.
how does someone have so little capacity for recognizing hypocrisy? Can you really rant against extremism and then call someone Stalin?
I was planning on making a poster of Obama with a little Hitler stash and the word Obama$Hitler, but somebody beat me to that quite a few years ago, didn't they?
Yes they did Pagan, some idiot put a Hitler stash on Bush. This is your reason/excuse for then copying these tactics? Because they did it too mommy?
Check out the Blaze comments about Michael Moore's weight, looks, etc. and tell me if it recalls 8th grade, 4th grade or 1st grade.
And when we pointed out that such tactics and antics, and the vile rhetoric that accompanied it was over the top and constituted hateful rhetoric, what was the answer we got again? Did it stop?
Do you think that maybe the people that engaged in such tactics might not be the people most suitable to complain about them now?
And by the way, I think maybe I should point out that accusing a person or a group of engaging in a Stalinist type method of governance-or in this case Stalinist Lite-is a far, far cry from calling a person Stalin, who was an outright psychopathic mass murderer.
Post a Comment
<< Home