I found the following contrast between the petty bourgeoisie and the corporate capitalists to be useful. (It doesn't say anything about the "new middle class" of the professionals and managers, however.) It's from the NATION's review (5/12/2012) of Thomas Frank's PITY THE POOR BILLIONAIRE, by Steve Frasier: >Frank’s most astute observation in Pity the Billionaire—a real contribution to >our understanding of the breathtaking recent rise of the “newest Right”—is >that the Tea Party represents, in many if certainly not all respects, the cri >de coeur of small business, hence its preoccupations with low taxes, balanced >budgets and onerous government regulations, and its entrepreneurial esprit and >infatuation with the free market. Frank’s anecdotal evidence for his case is >strong. For example, he discusses how burdensome regulations can be for small >businesses like hardware stores and restaurants, while corporate behemoths use >fleets of lawyers and large treasuries to circumvent them, and how new >entrepreneurs often rely on the equity in their homes to raise start-up >capital, which has left them especially vulnerable to the financial crash and >resentful of bailed-out monster banks. Unfortunately Frank is so preoccupied >with proving his case about the Tea Party’s political pathology that he spends >little time examining the social anatomy of what might be termed “family >capitalism.”
>Family capitalism solders together property and marriage, and the union >creates conflicting imperatives. Family capitalism is eager to grow but only >within the confines of the propertied, morally disciplined individual or >dynastic household, modest as it may be, or for that matter, how grand (Henry >Ford would no doubt have become a Tea Party charter member and crustily damned >the bailouts, probably with a heavy dose of anti-Semitism). Entrepreneurs and >those who aspire to their station link their pecuniary behavior and ambitions >to a whole social universe: distinct local communities, regional identities, >family continuity, ideals of manhood, concrete historical traditions (however >mythological), religious values, ethnic enclaves, the hearth, the homeland and >the sanctity of hard work. Family capitalism is part of a whole social >universe. It is not only distinct from but is in some ways at odds with the >cosmopolitan, deracinated world of faceless men in suits. Such conflict can >tilt to the left or right. Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the >twentieth, resistance on the left to the rise of corporate industry and >finance, among populists or within the antitrust movement, drew some of its >energy from the petite bourgeoisie. In midcentury, populism’s center of >gravity began shifting to the right, its animus increasingly directed at >“limousine liberals.” That richly evocative metaphor vividly captures the >integral mix of cultural and economic resentments that underlie elements of >the “newest Right.” >Family and corporate capitalism, though descended from the same genus, do not >possess identical economic and cultural DNA. Once the organic and hallowed >connection between private property accumulation and the family is severed, >anything is possible. Anonymous, impersonal and amoral corporate capital is in >a profound sense radical in the way suggested by Marx’s famous adage about how >“all that is solid melts into air.” (The argument of The Conquest of Cool >implicitly rests on this axiom of modern life.) In the end, nothing, no matter >how ancient or revered, can stand in the way of corporate capital’s drive to >accumulate. Its commitment to the family, to religious and traditional values, >even to patriarchy and racial hierarchy, is subject always to the higher power >of the bottom line. >In the universe of the family enterprise, moral convictions and social >aspirations are not easily separable from economic ones. Those who voted >Republican during the Reagan era and afterward were, like Tea Party >constituents today, a varied lot. They were probably more blue-collar >(although not as much as Frank assumed) than the tonier supporters of Rick >Perry. But it is misleading to sever the “newest Right” from the older right, >especially if you take into account that many struggling workers imagine >escaping hard times through a bootstrap start-up, and sometimes even manage to >do so. The 2010 elections suggested how artificial the separation of the >“economic” and “cultural” right wings may be; both contributed to the >Republican and Tea Party triumph, and to insist on this distinction hampers a >full accounting of contemporary politics on the right.< -- Jim Devine / "When truth is nothing but the truth, it's unnatural, it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world. In nature there are always so many other irrelevant things mixed up with the essential truth." -- Aldous Huxley _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
