The LLCs of the Petit-Bourgeoisie

cockles and mussels over here

This newsletter—now over two years old—has mainly focused on what it is like to be a publisher (of a small press). But I am not only a publisher; I am also an owner (of a small business) (NB: there are other owners of this business, including all the staff; I am not alone in this, but I do have the majority share).

The idea of anyone, including me, calling me a “small business owner” just makes me laugh. It is very much not how I imagine myself! To me the phrase calls up images of guys behind the register at bodegas, vague Reagan-era Republican gestures to some ideal, hardscrabble great American (man). But mostly what I think of is that despicable wretch, the petit-bourgeois.  As Marx put it, the small business owner is "cut up into two persons. As owner of the means of production he is a capitalist; as a labourer he is his own wage- labourer.”

When I do imagine when I imagine myself as a small business owner is always, immediately, Molly Malone (though I then wonder: did she own…